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

‘I become paralysed when I have to write prose, for publication, lf I do not get down on paper something fit to be printed at the first attempt, I become nervous and lose my patience, I do not know how to analyse…’

(Ihmisen ääni, ‘The human voice’, 1976).

Pentti Saarikoski (1937–1983) was a poet – his first collection was published when he was 21 – and translator whose passion was language; among his translations were Homers Odyssey, works by Aristotle, Heraclitus, Euripedes, Sappho, James Joyce’s Ulysses and Dubliners, Ibsens Peer Gynt, Henry Miller, J.D. Salinger, Italo Calvino, Swedish poetry. Despite the fact that he found prose-writing a painful process, he wrote a number of prose works, which have their existence in the border territory between the novel, the diary, the work-diary, autobiography and confession. More…