Christmas means carols. There are some you have to hear or sing, or it isn’t Christmas. And every year, if it’s a good year, you find a new one you haven’t heard before. Do you know this one? Apo Noponen…
Christmas means carols. There are some you have to hear or sing, or it isn’t Christmas. And every year, if it’s a good year, you find a new one you haven’t heard before. Do you know this one? Apo Noponen…
A list led me to this one. Mia Spanberg’s 7 contemporary Finnish novels on Electric Literature, to be precise. It’s translated into English by the author herself, Cristina Sandu, who’s also translated Adichie and Rooney into Finnish. At first, I…
This book has been winning awards ever since it was published in Sweden last year, and today it’s out in English. I read the Finnish translation. My five-year plan to learn Swedish well enough to be “civilized” (not a juntti,…
A mythical creature, she rises from the waters to wreak destruction. Snakelike, dragonlike, unlike anything else you hear in fairytales round here. She’s dangerous. That’s Bolla. But the book is about two men, who love each other, perhaps. Or at…
Some books go far. Some have a vast marketing machine behind them. Others have an adoring aunt that’s always inviting them round for coffee and cake, digging around her own bookshelves for that particular edition that might just help, and…
We’ve waited twenty years for this. To be scrupulously honest, I haven’t, as when it won the Finlandia Prize in 2003, I couldn’t speak a word of Finnish. But Pirkko Saisio’s Punainen erokirja in Mia Spangenberg’s translation as the Red…
When Annie Ernaux received the Nobel Prize in Literature last autumn, I am ashamed to say I had never heard of her. Some French-speaking friends had loved her work for years. Two had learned French outside France, whereas friends who…
Tiny books with pastel covers that pack a punch. I wish I had found these sooner, and that the author could still write more. I discovered the Danish Tove – Ditlevsen – through a rave review of Katriina Huttunen’s new…
A tree of life gleams gold, rubies ready to be plucked from its branches. Around the trunk swirls a snake, ready to strike. Not life, then, but knowledge of good and evil. Plucking the rubies out, stripping the branches, is…
Finland’s Gandalf is real. She forges fantastic fireworks, the like of which were never seen before. They dazzle the locals who’ve never been over the next hill – or heard of anyone under it. “You shall not pass!” she cries,…