Three years shy of its fiftieth anniversary, this book still bites.
Märta Tikkanen’s Århundradets kärlekssaga came out with S&S in 1978. I read Eila Pennanen’s Finnish translation, Vuosisadan rakkaustarina published by Tammi in the same year. In English, Stina Katchadourian’s translation The Love Story of the Century came out in 2020, ten days before Valentine’s Day. But romantasy this is not.
Tikkanen married another writer, Henrik, who had an alcohol use disorder. He was also an artist, whose illustration is on the cover. Henrik wrote his own story of their life together, Mariegatan/Mariankatu 26, the third volume of his trilogy set at different Helsinki addresses. In response, Märta’s Love Story records the passion, the domestic violence – and the devastating effect on her children, her work, and herself. As she says in one poem, when the men write about alcoholism, they never mention the stench – of stale alcohol, of dried vomit that someone else has to clean up…
Märta’s desperate attempt to carve out a corner for her writing, ideally not between 11 pm and 6 am, will resonate with her sisters down the ages. Henrik says to her, “what will you do in twenty years’ time when feminism’s resolved? You’ll have nothing left to write about.” In 1998, it might have felt like that world was possible, but in 2025, it does not.
Do buy the English translation direct from Deep Vellum. US publishers need all the love we can give them right now. And if you’d like to read it in another language, or see the play, or translate it, contact Helsinki Literary Agency. Tikkanen has been showered with awards from the Swedish Academy’s Finland Prize to the Nordic Women’s Literature Prize. It took me a long while to get around to reading her, but I’m glad I did. Her poems are as intense as if they had been written yesterday. As the back cover of my second-hand paperback puts it, “every adult should read this.” Have you?
Translator, editor, writer, reader
found in translation 
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