Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.

Top of the list: German translations of Finnish books, including Kari Hotakainen's Juoksuhaudantie ('Trench Road')

According to statistics, last year 204 Finnish books were published in 53 foreign languages. The 2008 list of translations of Finnish books into other languages has German at its head: 29 new translations appeared last year, 19 of them fiction. The list is compiled by the Finnish Literature Exchange (FILI) and the library of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS).

Second on the list is Russian, with 20 entries. Then come Estonian (17 titles, of which 11 are non-fiction), French, Polish, Japanese, Swedish and English. Finnish books for children and young people have been especially popular in Russia (ten titles published) and Japan (seven) last year.

The last three languages on the list of 53 are Croatian, Georgian and Hindi – with two Finnish graphic novels each.

We shall be featuring a small selection of Finnish books published in translation here. The Finnish Literature Society database lists all translations of Finnish titles and provides various search options for both authors and books.