Enn Soosaar's death was front-page news in nearly every Estonian news publication Thursday.

TALLINN — The man most responsible for introducing American fiction into Estonia at a time when it was largely isolated from Western culture died Thursday morning at the age of 72.

Enn Soosaar, was born Feb. 13, 1937 in Tallinn, the son of the curate in the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church. Tragedy struck when a motorcycle accident in the 1950s left him in a wheelchair the rest of his life. Undeterred by this setback, he studied to be an English philologist at the University of Tartu and graduated in 1964. At home he was surrounded by many books, which played huge role in turning him into one of the most important intellectuals in the smallest Baltic state.

Just a year after graduating from college, Enn Soosaar translated his first novel — Ernest Hemingway’s classic “A Moveable Feast” in 1965. Later he translated other

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