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…
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,…
Is this a Marmite book? Or maybe a sour-plum book, given the colour of the cover. My mum spent a large chunk of her childhood in Hong Kong, so she loves them, but they’re too strong for me. My mum…
As an immigrant to a Nordic country under very different circumstances, I devoured this. I’m vastly more privileged – I am not a political refugee, although my grandparents and great uncle were, in their day. But the otherness and sameness…
Maresi is home from the abbey. She has left her sisters behind. She has left the horror of death behind too, it seems. It isn’t easy coming home. The journey is hard, and long. And when she gets there, the…
It’s too warm. It should be colder – a lot colder. It’s unseasonable. It’s beautiful, delightful, but it all feels wrong. It’s just all a bit too much, not cosy enough, not delicate enough, perhaps? Things should be the same,…
Once upon a time, a hundred years and more ago, there was an ordinary man in an ordinary village, who led a really rather ordinary life. He worked hard, but nothing really excited him; he wasn’t very happy, but he…
As Finland’s centenary drew ever closer, I realised I had been neglecting her western neighbour in favour of the eastern one, which also has a big anniversary year. Selma Lagerlöf’s Mårbacka, published in the 1920s, seemed a good place to…
It is spring. The earth is bare, the snow is melting. The nights are cold, but the sun is getting stronger, the days are getting longer, a lot longer. Takatalvi (“back-winter” – the reverse of an Indian summer) might strike at…
This is one of the most beloved carols in the Nordic countries, but the tune is from Central Europe and it has travelled across the Atlantic in English translations. So why haven’t you heard of it yet? Maybe it’s because…
found in translation 