Kauimpana kuolemasta

Elina Hirvonen (born 1975) came to international attention with her first novel, Että hän muistaisi saman (English translation: When I forgot). With Kauimpana kuolemasta she shows that her success was well deserved: she has both talent and originality, and also courage linked with a sense of form. This book belongs to the genre of Finnish novels set at the interface between two countries, a device that in some hands can become a facile dramaturgical trick for the creation of contrasts. The interweaving of human stories from Finland with stories from Zambia sets all the alarm bells ringing, but the encounter between Paul and Esther, two sad people who lack a  secure homeland, vibrates with emotion-charged scenes. Paul is the son of Finnish overseas aid workers, Esther is an outcast from her Zambian village, in flight from one hell to the next. Slowly Paul and Esther are brought together and the reader hovers in uncertainty as to whether their paths will ever cross. The two characters see and experience violence as they journey towards pain, but Elina Hirvonen’s sensual and life-affirming language conveys the realisation that hope  is – sometimes – stronger than death.

Roman Schatz. - Photo: Veikko Somerpuro

Animals exist to make people rich. This wretched and wrong capitalist obsession is gleefully debunked in Roman Schatz’s first children’s book, with illustrator Pertti Jarla’s zany depictions of an animal revolution. Maria Antas interviews the author.

Zoo – eläimellinen tarina (‘The Zoo, a bestial story’, WSOY, 2009) is a children’s book that also appeals to the kind of adults who might love the exploits of John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Kevin Kline in the film Fierce Creatures – this book, like the film, is about attempts to make animals seem more dangerous and attractive to an ever more jaded audience accustomed to the pace of action movies.

Christmas is coming, and a dynamic new Zoo director wants to make an unprofitable zoo into a money spinner. The zoo’s inhabitants, however, refuse to be slaves to the market economy: led by an old Sumatran tiger called Gandhi, the militant mandrill Che, dreaming of revolution, and a bat named Mother Teresa who sees the world upside-down, the animals rise up in a wild, but ultimately non-violent, insurrection. Schatz’s story evokes 20th-century utopians, and the animals’ expressions, as visualised by illustrator Pertti Jarla, awaken the reader’s conscience and our  nearly forgotten ability to laugh at the way the world works.

MA: You’ve combined Christmas, satire, and humanity’s most important revolutionary figures from various cultures. What part of the work was challenging, and what was inspiring?

RS: Well, the characters came into being as if of their own accord – it felt like Gandhi, Che, and Mother Teresa were an unstoppable trio, in their own separate ways. So the characters and bringing together satire and Christmas weren’t the challenge. The challenge was writing for children. Children are an absolutely merciless ‘audience’ – they don’t believe in compromise, they sincerely see things in black and white. They either like something, or they don’t.

MA: Why did you choose to use animals as your main characters?

RS: Because animals are much more sympathetic than people, and it’s easier to identify with them.

MA: What about your book makes it a children’s book, and in what ways does it speak to adults – or do you think there’s a meaningful distinction between older and younger readers?

RS: That kind of division is artificial to me. Are The Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland for children or adults? A good story works for readers of all ages, you just have to write it in a way that everyone will be able to read it.

MA: In Finland in the last few years there have been a lot of books that take a critical look at the economics of the past decade and howit has affected us and our concept of society. You yourself have joined the discussion with your novel € (2007), which follows a single coin equipped with a microchip as it crosses Europe, critically and humorously examining its reality-TV adventures as they grow ever stranger. What do you think were the most frightening developments of the market economy and media society in this golden age – which now seems to have arrived at a turning point?

RS: The scariest thing was that people’s lives were made into a product, a project that can either succeed or fail. No one seems to remember that life is meant to be lived, that the value of a life doesn’t depend on how well you run the rat race.

MA: What are your hopes for the first year of the next decade – or, what would the animals in the zoo want to say to us humans? ;-)

RS: For myself, I hope that my book spreads around the world, of course, translated into many languages… The animals’ message to people might be: ‘Listen, you stupid people, you’re just full of yourselves and utterly two-dimensional! You think you’re the ultimate creation and that you can control the climate, nature, and the future. Stop messing around, dare to be animals and relax a little!’

Translated by Lola Rogers