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

Av vad är lycka. En Krösusroman
[From what is happiness. A Croesus novel]
Helsingfors: Schildts & Söderströms, 2012. 221 p.
ISBN 978-951-523-002-7
€20.25, hardback

What is happiness? According to the Western thought, happiness is to have, to own, and whenever possible to get even more – it is interesting to find out what our forefathers thought about the question before it was answered. This is precisely what Fredrik Lång does in this novel, the best since the ancient-inspired Mitt liv som Pythagoras (‘My life as Pythagoras’, 2005). Lång describes the Lydian king Kroisos, the richest man of his day, and his attempt to overthrow the wise Greek Solon’s idea that moderation and a contemplative lifestyle lead to happiness. Even if the driving force behind this novel is philosophical, it is brought alive with graphic depictions, extravagant battlefield scenes, intrigue and heartrending romance. Lång’s narrative is often ironic or comical, yet it still manages to emphasise the hard lives of its characters and the complete and utter inequality between master and slave, rich and poor, man and woman. Despite the immersion in the past, it is his own time Lång writes about, sometimes via shameless anachronism, sometimes subtle hints.
Translated by Claire Dickenson

Samlaren
[The collector]
Helsingfors: Schildts & Söderströms, 2012. 191 p.
ISBN 978-951-52 3001-0
€22.50, hardback

Violence and darkness have always played an important role in the novels Robert Åsbacka (born 1961) writes, but up until now they have been accompanied by mitigating factors, tenderness, and warmer tones. His new novel is a dark story which goes deeper into the wound than any of the earlier novels. Tom, lonely boy and fatherless victim of bullying in a children’s world where adults neither see nor help, gets to know the young couple next door, Bo and Viola. Bo is friendly, Viola is nice and beautiful, and their life seems, for a while, to be the picture of a better future for a boy to grow up to, a life with a car, girlfriend, breathing room. But Åsbacka mercilessly reveals the grim truth about Bo and Viola; violence exists in the adult world too. In all its horror, Samlaren is one of the autumn’s best novels; the only comfort comes in the form of Åsbacka’s style, and well balanced and meticulous depictions. Åsbacka is careful in his choice of depictions, and he knows how to make sure the image remains etched into the reader’s memory.
Translated by Claire Dickenson

Gräset är mörkare på andra sidan
[The grass is darker on the other side]
Helsingfors: Schildts & Söderströms, 2012, 425 p.
ISBN 978-951-52-2999-1
€22.40, hardback

Finnish translation:
Tummempaa tuolla puolen
Helsinki: Teos & Schildts & Söderströms, 2012. 436 p.
Suomennos [Translated by]: Laura Beck
ISBN 978-951-851-482-7
€28.40, hardback

Benjamin’s life is turned upside down when he, in despair over his fiancée’s death, discovers things he perhaps didn’t want to know. A photograph taken by a speed camera minutes before the car crash shows that Sofie wasn’t alone in the car. A group of childhood friends reunite for Sofie’s funeral; dark secrets from the past which had until now lain hidden away and unexplained start to come out. What really happened when one of the villagers died in mysterious circumstances? Who murdered little Sidrid Ask? The enormous dark shadow filling people with chilling terror – is it Raamt, evil himself, walking amongst them again? Which should they be more scared of, the supernatural evil or the everyday and human that seems to be all around them? In his second novel the former television presenter and comedian Kaj Korkea-aho (born 1983) writes with great detail and a finely tuned ability to pitch his language. His novel is filled with fear, evil and supernatural phenomena, but at the same time with humour and warmth. The intrigue advances at an addictively fast pace. Korkea-aho takes his novel from biting parody, via horror to a beautiful yet serious depiction of the power of friendship.
Translated by Claire Dickenson

Is
[Ice]
Helsingfors: Schildts & Söderströms, 2012. 364 p.
ISBN 978-951-52-2987-8
€ 23.25, hardback

Finnish translation:
Jää
Helsinki: Teos & Schildts & Söderströms, 2012. 365 p.
Suomennos [Translated by]: Leena Vallisaari
ISBN 978-951-851-475-9
€ 28.40, hardback

Ulla-Lena Lundberg (born on the island of Kökar, Åland, 1947) is already the author of an extensive list of award-winning books, but her new novel Is (‘Ice’) is undoubtedly her most impressive work. It is written in a classic genre, an epic bound by time and place, in which the sensitive portrayal of characters and details takes a strongly ethical direction. Is describes life in a outer archipelago in the late 1940s, where a young priest arrives with his small family. In his calling he is a man devoted to the Word: helpful, friendly, naïvely unsuspecting in his philanthropy. His wife is cast in a different mould: a practical, at times apparently emotionless survivor, who runs a large household single-handed. The couple becomes part of the community of small islands and its harsh living conditions. At times the ice that shuts the island off from the outside world melts into freedom, only to lapse again into a cold that rudely limits human destinies. Barren nature and a community spirit reverting to early Christianity take the measure of each other in the novel’s dramatic events.
Translated by David McDuff

Jäätelökauppias
[The ice-cream vendor]
Helsinki: Tammi, 2012. 300 p.
ISBN 978-951-31-6868-1
€ 36.20, hardback

The Finnish novel of the 2000s has been successfully set in other cultures. Like Kristina Carlson and Sofi Oksanen, Katri Lipson went her own way as an author in her award-winning debut novel Kosmonautti (‘Cosmonaut’, 2008), which was set in the Soviet Union of the 1980s. In her second novel Lipson (born 1965), who works as a doctor in Helsinki, portrays life in post-war Czechoslovakia. The novel begins with the making of a film. The director wants to work without a script, which is only in her head. The filming proceeds chronologically, so that the actors will not anticipate what happens to the characters in the future. The film tells the story of a man and a woman’s flight from danger in 1942. Although they do not know each other, they pretend to be a married couple and hide in the countryside. What will be their fate during the war and afterwards is left to the reader; the characters can be combined with those appearing in the novel’s later stages, in the 1960s and even the 1980s. Lipson’s technique boldly breaks with the supremacy of narrative and calls into question the construction of historical truth.
Translated by David McDuff

Kun kyyhkyset katosivat
[When the doves disappeared]
Helsinki: Like, 2012. 365 p.
ISBN 978-952-01078-19
€ 27.90, hardback

Four years after the huge national and international success of her third novel Puhdistus (Purge, 2008, now translated into 38 languages), Sofi Oksanen has published a new novel to the accompaniment of trumpets and drums – a launch cruise to Tallinn, Estonia, workshops and public readings. The Finnish film version of Puhdistus received its world premiere at the same time. Oksanen has earned her star status as a writer, but Kun kyyhkyset katosivat is not as good as its predecessor. The story of Estonian freedom fighter (‘Forest Brother’) Roland and his cousin Edgar, an opportunist who manoeuvres his way through the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Estonia from 1941 until the apparent liberalisation of the 1960s, is thin and fragmentary. The language and style are uneven and diffuse, while Edgar’s chameleon-like shifts of identity from pro-German sympathies through Siberia to complicity with the KGB deserve to be more carefully explored. While the book’s themes are unquestionably authentic and relevant, they don’t really blend together into a moving novel in the way that Puhdistus does.
Translated by David McDuff