Estonian author and Nobel prize nominee Jaan Kaplinski turns 80 By 1132shares The renowned Estonian poet, philosopher and culture critic, Jaan Kaplinski, celebrates his 80th birthday on 22 January. Kaplinski, who in 2016 was named the Laureate of the European Literature Prize (Prix Européen de Littérature) and in the same year, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, has been a major figure in the Estonian cultural scene and society for the past 50 years. He has published numerous collections of poems, prose and essays (his essays deal with environmental problems, philosophy of language, classical Chinese poems, philosophy, buddhism and Estonian nationalism) since 1965. Kaplinski’s work has been translated into many languages, including English, Finnish, French, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Icelandic, Hungarian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Hebrew, Bulgarian and Czech.