Zinaida Lindén. Photo: Johan Lindén

A new collection of short stories by the Leningrad-born author Zinaida Lindén explores the ambiguities of life between three cultures: her native Russia, her adopted Finland, and Japan, where she has also lived. In this introduction to Lindén’s short story Shards from the empire, Janna Kantola appreciates Lindén’s capricious, recalcitrant prose, and the positive, generous spirit that lies behind her work

Seen from a distance, Finns and Russians seem very like one another.

Zinaida Lindén has written her books from a cultural no-man’s-land in which she may have been forced to ponder the central questions of national identity. After studying Swedish in her native Russia, Lindén (born 1963) settled in Finland with her Finland-Swedish husband, and has written all of her works in Swedish. A recurring theme is that of encounters with the foreign, the other.

Lindén’s novel I väntan på en jordbävning (‘Waiting for an earthquake’), extracts of which were published in Books from Finland 4/2004) takes place between Russia and Japan; the Russian sumo wrestler-cum-fireman Ivan Demidov talks about his life to a Russian writer who has moved to Finland. The novel was awarded the 2004 Runeberg Prize for Literature. In the novel Takakirves – Tokyo (‘Takakirves – Tokyo’, 2007), the same Mr Demidov writes a series of letters to Finland.

Demidov does not appear in the collection of short stories, Lindanserskan (‘The tightrope-walker’, Söderströms, 2009; Finnish translation, Nuorallatanssija, Gummerus), but Finns, Russians and the Japanese encounter one another all the same. The writer’s own history – she has also spent a year in Japan – may explain this somewhat exotic combination.

The collection is a veritable balancing act between cultures, right down to its title. Can it be a coincidence that the metaphor of the tightrope walker was one used in literature to describe Finland’s balancing act between the pressures of east and west? As the motto of his thriller The Tightrope Men (1973), set partially in Finland, Desmond Bagley even went as far as to quote Bertrand Russell’s words about the fate of the tightrope walker. Russell makes the point that it is reasonable to assume that the tightrope walker may stay on the rope for ten minutes, but unreasonable to think he might continue without falling off for another two hundred years.

In the title story, the narrator claims that children make excellent acrobats because they do not experience fear due to their lack of life experience. Although these stories do not seem to uphold the myth of the Finns’ wild reputation, they might lead readers to think of our young nation in the light of that same fearlessness. For Lindén, however, this quality is linked to those balancing between two cultures; to the young Russian woman in the title story, who cannot but notice how stubborn Finns can be. Lindén has commented that she is often compared to the female characters in her works, to their thoughts and opinions, but says that she is in no way trying to depict herself.

Those who lump Finns and Russians together – or the author and her characters, for that matter – would be advised to think again: one thing the narrators in these stories have in common is their refusal to accept generalisations, which, on the other hand, does not prevent them from coming up with generalisations of their own. It is claimed in one of the stories that what Finnish and Japanese men have in common is their inability to flirt with women. (Having said that, the story also notes that, whereas a Japanese man will not dance even if you hold a gun to his head, many Finnish men go dancing voluntarily.)

The attraction of these ten stories lies in their sympathetic but capricious narrators, for whom growing up in the Soviet Union has provided perspective and a feel for the absurd. They always surprise us. That same temperament is reflected in the structure of the stories too: though these stories often end abruptly, they still end well. In their closing observations, everyday matters are elevated, sometimes to the point of aphorism.

When, over sixty years ago, the literary researcher V. Kiparsky attempted to document ‘The notions of the Russian people regarding Finland and the Finns’ as represented in literature, the results were not altogether flattering. Even Dostoyevsky has a Finnish character, the ‘unfriendly, crooked-nosed cook’, who with her continued silence drives her mistress to distraction.

Although Finnish taciturnity is a subject dealt with in Lindén’s short stories, Finnishness is generally viewed in a rather positive light. You would have trouble finding Finnish men as docile as the ones Lindén depicts. Part of the reason for this lies in the narrators’ positive outlook on the world in general, something that, in a moment of poetic fervour, one might call a quality of the Russian soul.

Translated by David Hackston

Daniel Katz. - Photo: Veikko Somerpuro.

What do Jesus, Aesop and the writer Daniel Katz all have in common? The key to the mystery lies in the second of the three names: fables are a part of all their works. Jesus spoke famously in (animal) metaphors, and the Greek writer Aesop is regarded as the father of the genre.

Daniel Katz’s 13th book, Berberileijonan rakkaus (‘The love of the Berber lion’, WSOY, 2008), is playfully aware of its ancient roots. In fact, his (post)modern collection of stories is, on every level, a conscious non-Finnish meta-fiction depicting the very process of writing.

Let me explain: the collection consists of twenty-four stories, each involving animals in one way or another. They were all sketched by a writer named Attila Kuf, whose funeral is depicted at the beginning of the book. In addition to Kuf’s writing, the collection includes a foreword and a postscript by Kuf’s friend, Mr Ypsilon, who is asked to complete his friend’s stories by Kuf’s widow. Kuf did not complete a single story, so the endings are all the work of another writer.

In one of the stories, the indecisiveness of Kuf’s narrator is brought to the fore: a publisher fittingly compares the incompleteness of the twenty-four stories to infidelity the size of a horse. It is fitting because, at least on an allegorical level, most of the stories in this collection deal with the woes of relationships.

The incompleteness of the stories also fulfils a philosophical function. After all, the fables originally provided readers with maxims, while the moral of the story was at the end. In the book, Kuf does not view life so simply: perhaps this is the book’s overall ‘moral’. In its wittiness and lightheartedness, Berberileijonan rakkaus certainly lives up to the other function of the fable. It’s hard not to laugh out loud at the trials and tribulations of the neurotic Kuf. In underlining his Jewish roots, Kuf’s self-flagellation (kuf is the Hebrew letter K) is something akin to that found in the novels of Philip Roth and his protagonist Nathan Zuckerman.

Like Roth, Katz (born 1938) also refers to his own authorial personality right from the outset with the letter-surname of Attila Kuf. The title story, ‘The love of the Berber lion’, is also linked to the author, if in a somewhat roundabout way. The lion is an animal common to many fables, but it also appears in the Bible, not least in connection with Daniel.

The subject of animals gives Katz many opportunities for the dark humour and gentle irony common throughout his work. The stories always highlight a sense of humanity towards the animals, even the insects. In the tragicomic story ‘Lord and Lady of the Flies’ Kuf gets a fly drunk, reads him the poem ‘A drunken fly’s buzzing’ by his late friend Karppinen, then inadvertently squashes the fly to death with a book while asking it its opinion of the poem.

This sympathetic humour, wild imagination and profound worldview have been elements of Katz’ work since his first novel Kun isoisä Suomeen hiihti (‘When Grandfather skied to Finland’, 1969). The book has been translated into nine languages, while his novel Saksalainen sikakoira (‘Schweinehund’, 1992), offering an insight into the causes of the Holocaust and the rebirth of fascism, is available in six languages. Katz has not yet been awarded the Finlandia Prize, although his love story Laituri matkalla mereen (‘A jetty to the sea’, 2001; see Books from Finland 1/2002) was shortlisted.

(First published in Books from Finland 4/2008.)