Latviankielinen romaani Upe oli yksi vuoden 2021 Euroopan Unionin kirjallisuuspalkinnon voittajista.

The life of Rute is prosperous, but it is filled with an emptiness made more and more intolerable by memories of her harsh childhood, longing for a long-lost sister, painful thoughts about a mother in prison and an inability to open up to (the) people closest to her, her husband included.

Rute never knew her father, but when he dies leaving her an inheritance of a country house by the river, she escapes – escapes from the city, from people, from herself. She needs not only to escape, but to try and learn to live with the pain caused by her sister’s disappearance – a pain that she has lived with for 10 years. Living in her father’s country house on the riverbank, she gets to know her neighbours, but, most of all, she gets to know the river … a river that becomes her symbolic sister.