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

In April Sofi Oksanen’s best-selling novel Puhdistus, Purge (winner of the Finlandia Prize for Fiction in 2008, WSOY, and now available in English translation) was top of the best-selling Finnish fiction list again. *how long has it been there?* Quite an achievement.

Finns seem to be besotted with Pertti Jarla’s comic books: three of them, set in the weird city of Fingerpori (‘Fingerborg’, Arktinen Banaani), were on the list.

The final volume of artist and writer Hannu Väisänen’s fictionalised autobiography, Kuperat ja koverat (‘Convex and concave’, Otava, 2009), was number five on the list. Number three was a newcomer, Tumman veden päällä (‘On dark water’, Tammi), also an autobiographical novel about childhood, by the the actor Peter Franzén.

Names appearing high on the foreign fiction list in April included Child Lee, Dan Brown, Falcones Ildefonso, Liza Marklund, Pamuk Orhan and W.G. Sebald.

‘Hohto on mennyt herrana olemisesta’ – Televisio ja poliitikko
[‘The glory has gone from being a VIP’ – the television and the politician]
Tampere: Vastapaino, 2010. 254 p.
ISBN 978-951-768-249-7
€ 29, paperback

This book, based on the author’s doctoral thesis in Media and Communication Studies at the University of Tampere, presented in February 2010, takes as its starting point Walter Benjamin’s well-known essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. Koski applies Benjamin’s ideas on cinema and film stars to contemporary television and politics. Koski maintains that while the public have become alienated from politics, politicians have also become alienated from themselves and have become reiterative entities whose essential content is repetition. After television and other new media have called into question traditional forms of politics, a significant challenge for politicians has been to prevent viewers from getting bored. Koski discusses relationship between politics and comedy, the ‘cynical’ viewer, the popular public image of Marshal Mannerheim (an iconic figure in Finnish history and politics) and the popularity of Sauli Niinistö, the frontrunner in the upcoming (2012) Finnish presidential election. Dr Koski also considers historical and contemporary image politicians in various other countries.

A novel set on the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Tulagi Hotel, was published by Dragon International Independent Arts (Diiarts) in London on 12 April. The writer is a native Finn, Heikki Hietala, who wrote his book in English.

Hietala, a translator and lecturer at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, began writing his novel in 1996, and in 2008 a refined version was uploaded onto the HarperCollins website, Authonomy, where Tulagi Hotel rose to number 15 in the popularity ratings for novels – in a selection of some eight thousand. It is now available also in an electronic version for Kindle.

The story takes place in the years of the Second World War and after; a US Marine fighter pilot from the Midwest, Jack McGuire, settles down on the Solomon Islands and begins to run a hotel. The arrival of his wartime best friend’s widow, Kay Wheeler, disrupts his orderly civilian life.

We congratulate the author for his rare achievement – however, we’d like to point out a small error. Tulagi Hotel is advertised as ‘the first book written in English by a Finn to be published outside Finland’, this is not quite true, as Anselm Hollo, a native Finn, translator and poet living in Colorado, has been publishing poetry books in English in the UK and the US since the 1960s. (Here are samples of his poems:)

This year’s Finnish Government Prizes for Literature and Translation have been awarded to, respectively, the writer and journalist (and former Editor-in-Chief of Books from Finland) Kristina Carlson (born 1949) and the translator Tarja Roinila (born 1964). The prizes, which are given on the recommendation of the Finnish National Council for Literature and are worth  €15,000 each, were awarded at a ceremony in Helsinki on 4 May by the Minister of Culture and Sports, Stefan Wallin.

Carlson’s second novel, Herra Darwinin puutarhuri (‘Mr Darwin’s gardener’, Otava), published last autumn, is a taut, deep and rich story narrated by many voices, contrasting science and faith, solitude and community. ‘It is not often that a single work renews the novel form,’ remarked the jury. (We featured an interview with Carlson, as well as an extract from the novel here on the Books from Finland website last September.)

The translator Tarja Roinila has specialised in prose and poetry written in Spanish, French and German; her latest translations, of the linguistically complex novels of the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard, are extremely musical, the jury remarked.

On 4 May, which was celebrated in Finland as the Day of the Book and the Rose (this custom, which originally took place on St George’s Day, April 23, was born in Barcelona: originally men gave women roses, and received books in return), Kristina Carlson received the Kiitos kirjasta (‘Thanks for the book’) medal, awarded jointly by the Booksellers’ Association, the bookshop sales asistants’ association Libro and the Finnish Library Association.

Ismo Kajander: Miss France, 1998

‘Paris traverse la pensée comme une encyclopédie de la vie, où l’on découvre des passages, des cours intérieures, des ruelles et des autoroutes, toujours plus surprenants. La ville ne se vide ni n’abandonne jamais, n’accorde ni ne refuse.’

‘Paris permeates your mind like an encyclopaedia of life in which you will incessantly discover astonishing new passages, courtyards, alleys and avenues. It will never either run empty or surrender, it won’t admit or refuse.’

L’air de Paris / Pariisin tuoksu (‘Air of Paris’, Musta Taide, 2009) is an elegant little book that features artwork by Ismo Kajander and texts by Anna Kortelainen relating to the mother city of all artists. More…

Helvi Juvonen (1950s). Photo: WSOY

‘…A strange tapir / (the bi-coloured one) / a wondrous tapir (the many-toed one) / circles the tree, goes round and about, / a small word hangs from the tip of his snout….’

Helvi Juvonen (1919–1959) wrote nature-inspired poetry; she was a fan of the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson, whose work she also translated. Her short adult life, in the drab Helsinki of the post-war years, was burdened by poverty and illness, and yet she wished to ‘toast the richness of our lives’.

The literary scholar Emily Jeremiah has translated a handful of Juvonen’s poems and takes a look at her work in this, the 15th part of a series devoted to classic Finnish authors (also available in our archive are essays about Kirsi Kunnas, Oscar Parland and Sirkka Turkka).

‘There’s not been much wit and not much joy, there’s a lot of grimness out there.’

This comment on new fiction could have been presented by anyone who’s been reading new Finnish novels or short stories. The commentator was, however, the 2010 British Orange Prize judge Daisy Goodwin, who in March complained about the miserabilist tendencies in new English-language women’s writing. More…

Jolly good! Young women celebrating the First of May in Helsinki in 1912. Photo: Ivan Timiryasev

How was city life for the single woman a hundred years ago in Helsinki?

She could ride a bike, for example, provided it was equipped with an ‘alarm system’ and the speed was not high. Socially she could have fun as long as she obeyed the rules. No admittance to restaurants without male company, for example.

Some young women in those days had to make a living by teaching or by working in an office – before they got married, of course.

A new exhibition (25 March–29 August) at Helsinki’s Ateneum art museum, entitled Kaupungin naiset (‘Women of the city’), focuses on the cultural life of young women in Helsinki in the 1910s through the eyes of the writer and critic L. Onerva (aka Hilja Onerva Lehtinen, 1882–1972). More…

Comics make frequent appearances on the lists of best-selling Finnish books: on the ‘What Finland reads’ list in March, Pertti Jarla’s new comic strip book, Fingerpori 3, about the eponymous, weird city of Fingerpori (‘Fingerborg’), is number one. His two other Fingerpori books are number eight and ten on the list. The zany comedy in them is verbal, based on puns – and therefore not easily exportable.

The new and final volume of Hannu Väisänen’s autobiographical, fictional trilogy about the young wannabe artist Antero, Kuperat ja koverat (‘Convex and concave’) made its way into the top ten right away, making its appearance at number two.

The Finlandia Prize -winning novel, Gå inte ensam ut i natten (‘Don’t go out into the night alone’, translated into Finnish as Älä käy yöhön yksin) by Kjell Westö, is number three – the novel was published in September 2009, and this reappearance is partly explained by special campaigns in the bookstores, says Westö’s publisher, Otava.

Sofi Oksanen’s prize-winning novel Puhdistus (Purge, now published in English) from 2008, is back on the list again, now at number four. Kari Hotakainen’s latest novel, Ihmisen osa (‘Human lot’, 2009, to appear in English in 2012) is at number six.

Hello? A bear cub at the Predator Centre in Kuusamo. Photo: Pasi Jäntti

Spring is here at long last, and the bears have woken up: this frightening beast has got out of the lair in Kuusamo, at the Predator Centre in north-eastern Finland (800 kilometres from Helsinki).

Some of our readers may remember Niisku, the brown bear portrayed in the print version of Books from Finland, issues 4/2006 and 1/2007 – very sleepy, contemplating hibernation.

There are probably about a thousand bears in Finland, and they usually hit the hay (aka the spruce branches in their lair) in November. Tiny bear cubs are born in late January or early February. The family will emerge from the lair when the snow melts. Niisku gave birth to two babies in the spring of 2007.

The Predator Centre in Kuusamo is a private orphanage for wild bears, lynxes and wolverines which have been brought there after being injured and/or orphaned.

Morning, pal. Sulo Karjalainen and Juuso in the Predator Centre, Kuusamo. Photo: Pasi Jäntti

Specimens of Ursus arctos has become a lifelong friends of Sulo Karjalainen (in the photo, right, with Juuso, c. 400 kilos) In summer he may go for forest walks and even fishing with Vyöti, 16, who was brought to the Centre as a small orphan.

The brown bear plays an important role in Finnish mythology, and often features in folk poetry. We are fans! But we never go into the woods alone when mother bear takes her babies out for a walk. Or, if we do, we keep making noises so that the bear family will know to avoid us. After all, if they can choose, they prefer carrots to humans (see the video on the photo page of the Centre video entitled ‘Porkkanat ja karhut’ [‘Carrots and bears’]).