Sari Airola's illustration in Silva och teservisen som fick fötter (‘Silva and the tea set that took to its feet’, Schildts) by Sanna Tahvanainen

The future of book publishing is not easy to predict. Books for children and young people are still produced in large quantities, and there’s no shortage of quality, either. But will the books find their readers? Päivi Heikkilä-Halttunen takes a look at the trends of 2011, while in the review section we’ve picked out a selection of last year’s best titles

The supply of titles for children and young adults is greater than ever, but the attention the Finnish print media pays to them continues to diminish. Writing about this genre appears increasingly ghettoised, featuring only in specialist publications or internet chat rooms and blogs.

Yet, defying the prospect of a recession, Suomen lastenkirjakauppa, a bookshop specialising in children’s literature, was re-established in central Helsinki in autumn 2011, following a ten-year break. Pro lastenkirjallisuus – Pro barnlitteraturen ry, the Finnish society for the promotion of children’s literature, has been making efforts to found a Helsinki centre dedicated to writing and illustration for children. The society made progress in this ambition when it organised a pilot event in May 2011.

The Finnish publishing sector is undergoing changes, which also have an impact on books for children and young adults – even though such developments are not trumpeted. The number of small independents and self-publishers continues to grow. At their best, their products do not necessarily lag behind those of the big publishing houses. Even so, the professional editorial skills and long-standing expertise of the major publishers are reflected in quality as well as in the level of investment, both of which are increasingly consistent. But smaller publishers, too, reap fame and fortune through prizes and nominations. Karisto was particularly successful in 2011; over the last few years, it has invested in domestic books for children and young adults with renewed enthusiasm.

It remains to be seen how the recent merger of the two Finland-Swedish publishers, Schildts and Söderströms, will affect the amount of Finnish-Swedish children’s literature that is published. This language area has seen the emergence of many new and distinctive authors of picture books in particular.

The serial format has been on the increase since 2000, but it may soon be on the wane; authors themselves are already publicly and extensively questioning the excessive concentration on series. Domestic writing continues to reflect the popularity of fantasy, while authors are fortunately displaying growing willingness to replace international narrative patterns with variations on home-grown Finnish folklore. For example, Ritva Toivola makes use of ghost stories and folk tales in her historical novel for young adults, Anni unennäkijä (‘Anni the dreamer’, Tammi). In her collection of tales, Lymyvuoren peikot, (‘The trolls of Skulk Mountain’, Tammi, illustrated by Christel Rönns), Eija Simonen dives into the underground world of trolls and, at the same time, into the human unconscious.

Dystopia, fantasy that reaches out into the future, is clearly on the way to becoming a new and trendy subgenre of domestic fantasy. The best examples include Annika Luther’s De hemlösas stad (‘The city of the homeless’, Söderströms), as well as Routasisarukset (‘The frost children’,WSOY), the splendid opening volume of Anne Leinonen and Eija Lappalainen’s fantasy trilogy. Both novels contain trenchant criticism of society and of the destruction of nature.

The realistic novel for young adults is clearly going through a critical stage. The number of self-contained (non-serial) novels for young people is decreasing. This literary genre needs new, young authors, bolder than their predecessors, to work alongside old hands. In addition to descriptions of traditional growing pains, there is interest in topical subjects. For example, Marja-Leena Tiainen’s novel Kahden maailman tyttö (‘The girl from two worlds’, Tammi) addresses cultural differences and the adaptation of an immigrant to her new surroundings. The work deserved as much media attention as Layla, a comparable novel for adults by Jari Tervo.

Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen’s Valoa valoa valoa (‘Light light light’, Karisto), which won last year’s Finlandia Junior Prize, provoked sharp exchanges on the internet, as some older readers disapproved of the novel’s uninhibited depiction of sexuality. In fact, it is a good sign that literature aimed at older teenagers is coming close to matching the diversity of adult literature, and Huotarinen’s work satisfies the literary taste of the most demanding of adult readers.

Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah

The author, a scholar and critic, specialises in books for children and young adults. She runs a blog (in Finnish), in which she reviews new books for children and young adults

Review section:

Tuuve Aro: Korson purppuraruusu (‘The purple rose of Korso’, WSOY)

Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen: Valoa valoa valoa (‘Light light light’, Karisto)

Hannele Huovi & Krsitiina Louhi: Jättityttö ja Pirhonen (‘The giand girl and Mr Pirhonen’, Tammi)

Jani Kaaro: Evoluutio (‘Evolution’, Avain)

Leena Krohn: Auringon lapsia (‘Children of the sun’, Teos)

Annika Luther: De hemlösas stad / Kodittomien kaupunki (‘The city of the homeless’, Söderströms)

Sanna Tahvanainen & Sari Airola: Silva och teservisen som fick fötter / Silva ja teekalusto joka sai jalat alleen (‘Silva and the tea set that took to its feet’, Schildts)

Marja-Leena Tiainen: Kahden maailman tyttö (‘The girl from two worlds’, Tammi)

Maria Vuorio: Kuningattaren viitta ja muita kiperiä kysymyksiä (‘The queen’s cloak and other knotty issues’, Tammi)

Söderströms will buy Schildts, whose owners (two non-profit associations, Svenska folkskolans vänner and Finlands svenska lärarförbund) will acquire a nearly 20 per cent share in the new company. The largest share in Schildts & Söderströms will be held by the art association Konstsamfundet (24 per cent), while the company’s third major owner will be Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland (15 per cent).

Both publishers have been operating with a loss in turnover of approximately half a million euros, though at the same time investment capital has brought them almost the same amount. Textbook publishing has been profitable for both, while general literature has been published at a loss.

With a turnover of slightly over six million euros, the new Schildts & Söderströms will employ a workforce of nearly 50.

Holger Schildt founded the Finnish-Swedish publishing house of Schildts in 1913. Its most internationally famous and best-selling fiction writer is the mother of the Moomins, Tove Jansson (1914–2001). Edith Södergran, Runar Schildt, Bo Carpelan and Robert Åsbacka are, for example, Schildts’ authors.

Werner Söderström founded the company that bears his name in 1878. Now known as WSOY, it originally published both Finnish and Swedish-language literature; the firm of Söderström & Co. was founded in 1891 for the exclusive publishing of Swedish-language literature. Söderström’s authors have included Gunnar Björling, Jörn Donner, Monika Fagerholm and Kjell Westö, among others.

It is thought that the merger may lead to a reduction in the number of fiction and poetry titles published – but there are also hopes that there may be an improvement in their quality.

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves at the Book Fair: Viro is Estonia in Finnish. Photo: Kimmo Brandt/The Finnish Fair Corporation

The Helsinki Book Fair, held from 27 to 30 October, attracted more visitors than ever before: 81,000 people came to browse and buy books at the stands of nearly 300 exhibitors and to meet more than a thousand writers and performers at almost 700 events.

The Music Fair, the Wine, Food and Good Living event and the sales exhibition of contemporary art, ArtForum, held at the same time at Helsinki’s Exhibition and Convention Centre, expanded the selection of events and – a significant synergetic advantage, of course – shopping facilities. Twenty-eight per cent of the visitors thought this Book Fair was better than the previous one held in 2010.

According to a poll conducted among three hundred visitors, 21 per cent had read an electronic book while only 6 per cent had an e-book reader of their own. Twenty-five per cent did not believe that e-books will exceed the popularity of printed books, and only three per cent believed that e-books would win the competition.

Estonia was the theme country this time. President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of the Republic of Estonia noted in his speech at the opening ceremony: ‘As we know well from the fate of many of our kindred Finno-Ugric languages, not writing could truly mean a slow national demise. So publish or perish has special meaning here. Without a literary culture, we would simply not exist and we have known this for many generations, since the Finnish and Estonian national epics Kalevala and Kalevipoeg. – During the last decade, more original literature and translations have been published in Estonia than ever before. And we need only access the Internet to glimpse the volume of text that is not printed – it is even larger than the printed corpus. We live in an era of flood, not drought, and thus it is no wonder that as a discerning people, we do not want to keep our ideas and wisdom to ourselves but try to share and distribute them more widely. The idea is not to try to conquer the world but simply, with our own words, to be a full participant in global literary culture, and in the intellectual history and future of humankind.’

Finland meets Estonia: authors Sofi Oksanen and Viivi Luik in discussion. Photo: Kimmo Brandt/The Finnish Fair Corporation

WSOY trademark: design by Akseli Gallen-Kallela

The Swedish media company Bonnier (est. 1804) has bought the Finnish WSOY (Werner Söderström Corporation, est. 1878) publishing company, formerly owned by the now multinational Sanoma Corporation. Bonniers’s learning materials in Finland and Sweden were simultaneously bought by Sanoma.

Leena Majander-Reenpää, former managing director of Otava Publishing Company (est. 1890; she resigned from her job last year), is the new vice CEO responsible for the publishing programme and foreign rights at WSOY.

Anne Valsta, CEO of the Tammi Publishers, (est. 1943, also owned by Bonnier since 1996) is also the CEO of the new WSOY.

The president of the Swedish Bonnierförlagen AB, Jacob Dalborg, will be the Chairman of the Boards of both Tammi and WSOY; he says both will continue as independent companies.

Bonnier operates in 17 countries and employs more than 10,000 people. WSOY last year shed 40 jobs and now employs some 100 people.

What are books made of? Picture: Wikipedia

‘The worst of all is if the writer forgets writing and starts turning out books.’

This thought is from the poet Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen’s introductory talk at the Lahti International Writers’ Reunion (LIWRE), which took place at Messilä Manor between 19 and 22 June. ‘There’s too much talk of the stunting of the book’s lifespan and the economic life of the publishers,’ she continues. A writer ‘must not forget that he or she is responsible to the work of art, nobody else, not even the readers.’

Today, book publishers are responsible to capital and productivity, and a work of literature resembles a product with an invisible best-before marker. Is its life a couple of months, like ice cream? Books delivered to the shop in September are already old-hat in February, and are best put on sale.

An article by Martti Linna in the Finnish Writers’ Union magazine (Kirjailija, 2/11) deals with the maculation that is mentioned in publishing agreements, or the destruction of copies of ‘old’ works. The unsold copies of one children’s book published in the autumn of 2008 were destroyed at the beginning of 2011. For the author, the destruction of a work is, of course, a cause of sadness; for the publisher it is merely the elimination of an item of expenditure. The development of print-on-demand services will perhaps put an end to both the storing of books in warehouses and the sadness of writers.

Faces sell the printed word. How old a new writer is, and what he or she looks like, is important. It is more difficult to sell an ‘old’ and ‘ugly’ writer to the media, both at home and abroad. (That is, if the ‘old and ugly’ writer is a woman – in the case of a man things may be different, we think, although good looks are of course an advantage to men too.)

We have also heard of writers being warned by their editors not to write ‘too intelligently’ in order not to hamper the marketing of the book. This is linked to a paradox that we just can’t get over: Finns are more highly educated than ever, so that there is no need to suppose any lack of intelligence or knowledge when what we might call products of the spirit are designed for publication. Playing safe may perhaps bring coins into the till, but it won’t result in art.

Youngish women with camera-friendly faces sell like hot cakes. As the Finnish author Pirkko Saisio said (in a feature entitled ‘Menestystarina’ – ‘Success story’ –  by Pekka Hiltunen, published in Image journal 5/11), ‘I have heard that foreign agents always ask three things about Finnish writers: how many copies have they sold in Finland, how old are they and are they good-looking. These are very influential today. ‘Whether their work are the stuff of classics or reduced-calorie-ice-cream-human-relationship prose is, of course, irrelevant to the media, which need a constant supply of new interviewees. In a celebrity culture, writers are considered to be functioning members of the profession of publicity – which is pretty rich, considering that they actually practice their profession in solitude.

Underestimating the reader is always short-sighted and intellectually impoverished – whether it is done by the writer or the publisher. Being a writer may be a profession, but ‘writing cannot be performance,’ said Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen.

In our job editing a literary journal, we often find ourselves leafing through texts which, you can somehow tell, have before publication been polished for years in creative writing schools, publishers’ offices and writers’ workshops in order to produce a publication. What is missing, though, is the convincing passion and skill, the certainty and self-confidence with which the writer takes the reader where he or she wishes.

It is the voice of original talent and intelligence, not to be found at writers’ workshops or publishers, but in solitude and in thought.

-Today we're off to the Middle Ages Fair. – Oh, right. - Welcome! I'm Knight Orgulf. – I'm a noblewoman. -Who are you? – The plague. *From Fingerpori by Pertti Jarla

Among the ten best-selling Finnish fiction books in 2010, according statistics compiled by the Booksellers’ Association of Finland, were three crime novels.

Number one on the list was the latest thriller by Ilkka Remes, Shokkiaalto (‘Shock wave‘, WSOY). It sold 72,600 copies. Second came a new family novel Totta (‘True’, Otava) by Riikka Pulkkinen, 59,100 copies.

Number three was a new thriller by Reijo Mäki (Kolmijalkainen mies, ‘The three-legged man’, Otava), and a new police novel by Matti Yrjänä Joensuu, Harjunpää ja rautahuone (‘Harjunpää and the iron room’, Otava), was number six.

The Finlandia Fiction Prize winner 2010, Nenäpäivä (‘Nose day’, Teos) by Mikko Rimminen, sold almost 54,000 copies and was fourth on the list. Sofi Oksanen’s record-breaking, prize-winning Puhdistus (Purge, WSOY; first published in 2008) was still in fifth place, with 52,000 copies sold.

Among translated fiction books were, as usual, names like Patricia Cornwell, Dan Brown and Liza Marklund.

In non-fiction, the weather, fickle and fierce, seems to be a subject of endless interest to Finns; the list was topped by Sääpäiväkirja 2011 (‘Weather book 2011’, Otava), with a whopping 140,000 copies. Number two was the Guinness World Records 2011, but with just 43,000 copies. Books on wine, cookery and garden were popular. A book on Finnish history after the civil war, Vihan ja rakkauden liekit (‘Flames of hate and love’, Otava) by Sirpa Kähkönen, made it to number 8 on the list.

The Finnish children’s books best-sellers’ list was topped by the latest picture book by Mauri Kunnas, Hurja-Harri ja pullon henki (‘Wild Harry and the genie’, Otava), selling almost 66,000 copies. As usual, Walt Disney ruled the roost in the translated fiction list.

The Finnish comics list was dominated by Pertti Jarla (his Fingerpori series books sold more than 70,000 copies, almost as much as Remes’ Shokkiaalto!) and Juba Tuomola (Viivi and Wagner series; both mostly published by Arktinen Banaani): between them, they grabbed 14 places out of 20!

Sir Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke (1554–1628) by Edmund Lodge. Photo: Wikimedia

In November 1586 Fulke Greville (later 1st Baron Brooke) sent Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham a letter complaining about some ‘mercenary printers’‘ plans to print the romance novel Arcadia written by his friend (and Walsingham’s son-in-law) Sir Philip Sidney, who had died that very same year. This ‘mercenary book’ needed to be ‘stayed’, i.e. censored by the authorities, so that Sidney’s friends and relatives might take control, and also because publishing his works without consulting Greville or someone close to Sidney might damage his reputation or even his ‘religious honors’.

I rehearse this ancient tale because of its exemplary value for us today. From our point of view there seems nothing extraordinary about Greville’s actions: he is seeking to defend his friend’s literary estate from ‘mercenaries’ who steal intellectual property (IP): pirates.

But in the early days of mechanical printing, there was no such thing as a ‘literary estate’ or ‘piracy’; there were no agents, no concept of IP, no legal disputes waged over the control of an author’s oeuvre; authorship was not yet even a widely socially recognised category of real work, and copyright was something different altogether: an up-for-grabs monopoly owned by the publisher and not by the author. What more, there is no indication that Sidney himself would have ever wanted his works to see print (it is told that on his deathbed he wished for them to be burned).

So in actuality, Greville’s mission to end the piracy of Arcadia even before it had been published was a momentous moment, and the emergence of the pirate signifies the birth of the modern author. Although other works by Sidney were later piratically published, Arcadia remained (at least for a while) the property of those closest to Sidney himself; his sister later published his works in a beautiful collected edition, which paved the way for other, living authors (like Ben Jonson) to publish their collected works. In effect, it was a product of a new media technology, the ‘mercenary book’, which forced modern thinking about authorship and copyright into existence.

If you listened to the hyperbole of hype and the nagging naysayers last year, it certainly seemed like we were on the cusp of something equally new and exciting in Finland with ebooks. Many commentators painted rosy pictures of the future of publishing. Bestselling authors like Katariina Souri vilified the format and the pirates that would eat into their income.

At the same time WSOY, the largest publishing house in Finland, was in the middle of an internal power struggle between (or so it seemed) a market-oriented troupe of executives who wanted to modernise the business and the old guard with their more traditional, high-brow literary values. For some, ebooks became synonymous with this struggle, and consequently everything bad about the industry, and conservative aesthetes like Antti Nylén painted terrible pictures of a horrible future much like this one by the science fiction author Cheryl Morgan in an interview by the website SF Signal:

– in 10 years time the publishing industry will be radically different, and much more like Hollywood. The vast majority of book sales will be of a small number of titles that are incredibly expensive to produce, and most of them will involve celebrities in some way or another. What people understand by a ‘book’ will also be radically different. People will expect books to read themselves to you, and to have extensive video content. There will also be all sorts of ‘added value’ options, by which the publishers will mean opportunities for you to spend more money.

Morgan’s silly, satirical example of these added values is the ability to buy the same clothes or perfumes as the protagonists in your new ‘vooks’ are wearing. It might yet happen – but a few months after the launch of ebooks, what has really happened? Nothing. No one talks about ebooks now. It’s not even interesting as a subject in literary circles.

This might be because of the stupidity of publishers who were unable to capitalise on the launch: what we have is a classic case of too many formats and too many devices, with not enough titles and too few outlets; not one tried to take advantage of the new possibilities like embedded video or animated text; the prices of ebooks are still way too expensive, and so there is simply no reason to buy them. It’s worth a mention that some small publishers have even done the opposite. Instead of embracing ebooks as a cheap alternative, the poetry publisher Poesia has switched from print-on-demand and digital publishing (which it had pioneered in Finland) to traditional modes such as offset and even letterpress printing, citing as a reason the poor quality of pod-published books and the need to value books as works of paper art.

It could be that the real impact is yet to come. But even abroad, where the Kindle and other reading devices have actually made an impact on the industry (with large bookstore chains like Borders in the US filing for bankruptcy because of a huge drop in sales) bestselling authors like Neil Gaiman have done very well because of the new opportunities epublishing has allowed. Gaiman himself published his book American Gods online for a month, which led to a 300 per cent increase in sales.

Because of his positive experience, Gaiman is now in favor of piracy. For him, piracy is actually like lending from a library or a friend – and that, I think, is exactly what we need for ebooks to become a meaningful addition: a kind of electronic library and bookstore, something like the music service Spotify, where you pay a certain amount monthly and then can listen to as much music as you want to. I don’t know if that will happen, but what I find interesting in Gaiman’s case is that once again pirates are forcing a new kind of thinking about authorship and publication to emerge – but this time the pirate is an author’s friend, not his enemy.

Kirja tienhaarassa vuonna 2020

This book looks at Finnish book publishing and its likely rate and direction of change. The future of the Finnish industry looks slightly more favourable than similar international forecasts have made out, although there have been some shake-ups in the Finnish book world too. The authors point out that while the decrease of reading as a leisure pursuit appears to be part of a long-term international trend, many feared for the future of the book in previous centuries as well. Book production and distribution, as well as changes undergone by various genres, are illustrated through a variety of statistics. They also go a long way towards explaining whether the publishing industry’s current difficulties are intrinsic or extrinsic in origin. The authors strive to find new perspectives to get away from a fear of the online world. The renewable publishing and reading culture envisioned by the authors will benefit from the novelty and efficiency of electronic publishing and will reinforce traditional knowledge. Professor Kai Ekholm is the Director of the National Library of Finland; Yrjö Repo is a researcher and statistician.

You get the picture? A translation error in China. Photo: Leena Lahti

Why just three per cent? Translator Owen Witesman seeks an explanation for the difficulties of selling foreign fiction to the self-sufficient Anglo-American market. Could there be anything wrong with the translations?

I am a professional translator, and I have a secret: I don’t read translations.

I’m not alone. The literary website Three Percent draws its name from the fact that only about 3 per cent of books published in the United States are translations (the figure for Germany is something like 50 per cent). There are various opinions about why this is, including this one from Three Percent’s Chad Post writing at Publishing Perspectives.

Why do I say it’s a secret that I don’t read translations? Because people expect me to read translations, as if as a translator it were my sacred duty to show solidarity with my professional community. Or maybe I can’t be cosmopolitan otherwise.

But here’s the cold, hard truth: there are some 350 million native English speakers in the world, most of whom live in the United States. Among them there are a lot of writers. And while for a very few readers translated literature is a category unto itself, for most of us translated literature is competing with everything else on the fiction shelves.

Does anyone get turned off from translated literature by a Henning Mankell? No. It’s usually a Kafka or Márquez, challenging enough in the original, sometimes made incomprehensible in translation. (Luckily for big names like those, a new translation usually comes along.) We read Mankell for the puzzle – the language just has to not get in the way. We read Márquez for both the story and the language.

Take how many people have had a bad experience with a translation that made the foreign seem alien, add the language barriers between foreign books and domestic agents and publishers, and then put this in the context of stiff domestic competition, and you get only 3 per cent of books published in the US being translations.

The ironic thing about the 3 per cent figure is how tremendously important translated literature is to the Anglo-American literary consciousness. Ask anyone who paid attention in high school who the greatest authors of all time are, and you’re almost certain to get at least two Russians, a Frenchman or two, a Spaniard, two Chileans, and a Brazilian, plus an ancient Greek or three.

Despite my dirty little secret, my favourite novel is a translation. When I was eighteen, I read Narcissus and Goldmund, by Hermann Hesse. However, and with all due respect to the English language translator, Ursule Molinaro (and whoever her editor was), even as a teenager, and without any reference to the source German text, I knew the translation wasn’t the best it could be. But as this is my favorite book, so whatever deficiencies there are in the translation or with the original work, the virtues of both far outweigh them for me. And this is one of the most beloved books by a Nobel Prize winner who had been honing his conceptual expression for decades – what happens to the average book that ends up in a translation in which an eighteen-year-old can see deficiencies? In my case it doesn’t get read. I read a paragraph, I start editing the grammar and punctuation in my mind, perhaps rephrasing the dialogue, and I get bored.

Consider the path a (Finnish) translator walks to arrive at his profession. First comes a connection to Finland, one that surprisingly often comes either by chance or fate, depending on one’s cosmology. Then comes what we might call an infatuation: the nascent translator becomes obsessed with Finnish language and culture, which leads to improved language skills and literary awareness. By the time the literary translator really breaks into the profession, his Finland hobby has likely been going on for a decade. If the translator works with Finnish literature by day professionally, and then continues to read Finnish literature, follow Finnish news, and keep up with Finnish friends during his free time out of old habit, how current is he likely to stay with literature in his native language? Taking myself as an example, I know exactly what’s going on in Finnish literature right now, but I haven’t really the slightest idea about what’s going on in American literature.

Translation is rewriting a book from another language in your own. The author takes care of the plot and the Finnish, and I’m supposed to take care of the English. Reading Finnish doesn’t help with that. Reading other translators’ work probably won’t help either, and may even hurt. However, every word of English-language literature I read can improve my ability to manipulate the English language in the way that Finnish authors manipulate Finnish. To my mind, reading in his own language should be a literary translator’s primary professional development activity.

The importance of professional proofreading and editing cannot be overstated. Publishing translations without multiple reviews by native linguistic experts is professional suicide for everyone whose name is on the title page. A publisher or agent who sends out material without multiple reviews by native linguistic professionals doesn’t want to make money. Sample translations and promotional materials should be top quality, not an afterthought – see this post by Emily Williams.

Literature in translation can and does compete with native literature, even in demanding markets. I don’t expect to see any ‘breakthrough’ that permanently changes the 3 per cent figure cited above, but that doesn’t mean translated literature has failed to find a readership. It just means that there is a lot of competition and that every book succeeds or fails on its merits, not on the reputation of the overall field. Whatever momentum one big hit may create is likely to be short-lived. Yes, there are aspects of the book trade that make breaking in difficult, but every new author faces these challenges. Perhaps the greatest disservice any of us involved in translation can do is to adopt a sort exceptionalist attitude, as if the success of a book or author in Finland, or wherever, should give the book a free pass from all of the normal requirements for finding a publisher and an audience. Hype will only get you so far.

The beginning of this essay is a lie. I do read translations. I want to read translations. But you, the translator, and I, the translator, must understand that I like television and films and music and my bicycle and my garden and my dog as much as I like books. I like my wife and my children and my church even more. I read the books I’m supposed to in order to be literate, but I also read science fiction and fantasy and espionage. I’m not a captive audience. You have to win me over. Please win me over. You can’t say the Finnish or German or Chinese or whatever made you do it. You have to be a translator. Take responsibility. Win me over.

A Finnish tale set in Egypt: Mika Waltari's post-war novel has been translated into 30 languages, English in 1949

a about after again against all also always an and another any are around as at away back be because been before being between both but by came can children come could course day did didn’t do does don’t down each end er even every fact far few find first for from get go going good got great had has have he her here him his home house how i i’m if in into is it its it’s just kind know last left life like little long look looked made make man many may me mean me might more most mr much must my never new no not nothing now of off oh old on once one only or other our out over own part people perhaps place put quite rather really right said same say says see she should so some something sort still such take than that that’s the their them there these they thing things think this those though thought three through time to too two under up us used very want was way we well went were what when where which while who why will with without work world would year years yes you your

Doesn’t this just run like a poem? An extract from somebody’s stream of conscience? ‘…again against all also always… quite rather really right said’? Actually it’s a list of the 200 most used words of the English language in alphabetical order.

This remarkable list is among the references* in a new doctoral thesis from the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Helsinki, Englanniksiko maailmanmaineeseen? Suomalaisen proosakaunokirjallisuuden kääntäminen englanniksi Isossa-Britanniassa vuosina 1945–2003 (‘To world fame in English? The translating of Finnish prose fiction into English in Great Britain between 1945 and 2003’).

Instead of textual analysis, the author, Raila Hekkanen, approaches the subject by placing translation activities into a sociological context – in what sort of circumstances translations were produced, which factors were influential in the process – and employs descriptive translation and language research.

In England between the years 1949 and 2003 only 28 prose works by Finnish authors were published; of these, only the 1950s translations of 12 historical novels by Mika Waltari (1908–1979) gained any notable popularity. However, Waltari’s most famous novel, Sinuhe egyptiläinen (The Egyptian), was not translated from Finnish but via Swedish, and it was heavily edited and cut. More than the translators, it was the publishers who were to blame. This kind of ‘translation’ is no longer practised, as norms of translating and editing have changed greatly over the past couple of decades.

Hekkanen aims at addressing wider theoretical questions concerning the roles of different factors of the translation process and the placement of the translation in both its original and target cultures as well as in the ‘interculture’ between them (people who live in a dominant English-language culture, but with contacts with Finland). The impact and significance of public funding in commissioning and publishing literary translations, as well as recent changes brought about by the expansion of the European Union, have hardly been researched so far. In Finland, the role of FILI (formerly the Finnish Literature Information Centre, now the Finnish Literature Exchange) has become essential in the role of establishing contacts with (and between) translators of various languages and and providing opportunities for training.

Raila Hekkanen also interviews several translators and editors involved with an English-language literature journal featuring samples of Finnish literature  – namely  Books from Finland; the translation and editing processes of the journal since the early 1980s are also illustrated in this academic work.

And that’s nice: we do indeed been try to delight a big-language culture, i.e. English-language readers (be they native speakers, genuine foreigners or Finns who read English), with interesting stuff from a small-language culture, provided by a) Finnish authors, b) translators who are willing to work more or less for a song. As the Finns know very well, it takes two to tango (we’re collectively addicted to our Northern, melancholy version of the fiery Argentine dance). As long as you’re prepared to go on reading, we’ll go on writing, editing and translating. We get a kick out of what we do, and we hope you do, too.

*) source: Sara Laviosa-Braithwaite: The English Comparable Corpus (ECC): A Resource and a Methodology for the Empirical Study of Translation (University of Manchester, 1996)

Money, money, money... Photo: Twid/Wikipedia

Through his work, a writer provides a living for both himself and his publisher. The publisher makes his profit through the work of his writers, and both parties are satisfied. Is this how it goes?

The novel Puhdistus (Purge, 2008) by the Finnish author Sofi Oksanen (born 1977) has been translated into 13 languages, including English, and by now it has sold who knows how many copies.

One would imagine her publisher would like to live happily ever after with his superstar, and perhaps also vice versa – for WSOY (est. 1878) has long been one of the most powerful, as well as the most enlightened, publishing houses in Finland.

Well, no – Oksanen had not been happy about the way the directors at WSOY had begun to treat the company’s authors, and after a period of public acrimony, also involving other authors, WSOY last June announced it would not be publishing Oksanen’s next work, and so the two parted ways. (Obviously Oksanen had no problems in choosing another publisher, and her next book will be published by Teos.)

In June WSOY also sacked about 30 of its employees. This made its authors wonder who they will be working with in the future, as the number of editors in the Finnish fiction department was reduced just to a couple.

The internet publisher Leevi Lehto notes in the interview we published last week that according to Jacques Eijkens, the Dutch CEO of Sanoma, which owns WSOY, ‘the financial significance of works of literature was just “small potatoes”.’

From the CEO’s point of view, or in purely monetary terms, that may be so: in 1999 WSOY became a part of Sanoma, one of the biggest media concerns in Europe (even though the ownership still is Finnish by 90 per cent); WSOY’s turnover is less than one per cent of Sanoma’s.

In Finland, as elsewhere, the publishing world has been perturbed by, among other things, an overly narrow focus on the profits demanded by publicly quoted companies and the influence of electronic readers on printed books. When any business starts to grow, it faces the question of whether or not to issue publicly quoted shares. And if it does, its first responsibility becomes a financial one, to its shareholders.

Worried authors – just ‘small potatoes’ in the business? – may then bleat, ‘Publishing is not just business…’ And they are right.

Traditionally writers enjoy a more or less close relationship with a representative of their publisher, i.e. a human being (an editor). Hannu Raittila, an ex-WSOY author, has said that despite the fact that a publishing company is a business, it is also a cultural institution, which in turn means that the business idea must be based on the continuity of the business, not on the maximising of the profit for the shareholders.

As marketing likes to deal with ‘brands’, authors, too, according to this overweening pursuit of profit, had better make themselves easier to ‘sell’ to book buyers. A very annoyed Jari Tervo (one of the best-selling writers of WSOY – and of Finland), declared, in an article published in Suomen Kuvalehti this autumn, that he’s certainly not ‘a brand’ – as a brand is something predictable.

Raittila’s claim seems viable, as small publishers do thrive – if they handle their business skilfully. A good-quality work of fiction may not bust blocks, but it will be modestly profitable. And it won’t be a brand.

It will be read. Which is, we believe as readers (and buyers) of books, the idea of publishing.

Let’s hear it for the small potatoes.

Leevi Lehto. Photo: Lotta Djupsund/Savukeidas

Founded by poet Leevi Lehto, ntamo is seen by many as the black sheep and enfant terrible of the world of Finnish publishing.

From its inception, ntamo (shortened from the word kustantamo, publishing company) has striven to subvert the familiar conservative models of publishing that audiences are used to.

Ntamo publishes books for small circulation, such as poetry and experimental prose. Its catalogue includes works both by celebrated writers, such as Kari Aronpuro, and by a whole host of authors making their literary debuts.

Lehto’s objective has been to publish as many books as possible, using a system of print on demand, and to have as little to do with the books’ content as possible. What’s more, ntamo’s publications are not marketed at all. Readers can find information on new publications by following the publisher’s blog [in Finnish only]. I met up with Lehto a while ago and we discussed ntamo’s current situation, new trends in the publishing world and the future of books and literature in general.

Teemu Manninen: When ntamo was first founded, I couldn’t help thinking it was some kind of performance or a work of conceptual art. What do you think of ntamo nowadays? How have your decisions not to actively market books and not to edit them worked out as a business strategy?

Leevi Lehto: I’ve been surprised at how effective a marketing strategy of not marketing your books can be. It’s made it possible for us to establish and develop a brand that’s easily recognisable. I’ve received a lot of feedback on my refusal to edit books. At first I just thought that books should be released exactly the way they were written, but before long I came across situations where I ended up having to edit some books in the traditional way. That being said, I still think one of the reasons larger publishing houses seem so stiff is because they won’t budge when it comes to editing new works.

The tradition of editing always comes back to the issue of technology and the fact that, once an edition has come out, you can’t recall it. But with the advent of modern technology, polishing each and every new work for publication seems utterly senseless. At the same time, the internet has removed the distance between producer and consumer: anyone can produce a book and publish it. In order to remain competitive, paper books will have to be able to do the same, which will involve publishers’ thinning out their vast organisations and essentially cutting out marketing altogether, because it will no longer be cost-effective.

TM: We could soon move to e-books. What do you think about that?

LL: Whenever a new technological medium is created, at least at the outset it’s always filled with content from the old media: for instance, in the early days of the wireless, the radio used to broadcast plays, and so on. In the same way, the e-book currently preserves the whole idea of a book, and is actually strengthening it. As long as this is the case, e-books will not challenge the dominance of paper books. From the markets’ point of view – for the time being, at least – e-books and paper books have to be seen as fully interchangeable with one another.

TM: You’ve often said that the era of large publishing houses as gatekeepers and guardians of good taste is over. This prediction seems to be coming true – only recently, Jacques Eijkens, the CEO of the largest publishing house in Finland, WSOY, commented that the financial significance of works of literature was just ‘small potatoes’. At the time, people were shocked at this comment, but I remember thinking that ‘potatoes’ is in fact the future of literature as a whole: there will no longer be such a thing as an international bestseller; instead there could be a vast amount of books with small print runs aimed at smaller audiences. That’s the reason online bookstores like Amazon have been so successful.

LL: Absolutely, and in fact ntamo has already proved that, in this changing environment, publishing poetry can actually make for profitable business. This too is linked to the notion of the larger publishing houses’ role as the guardians of good taste: from the perspective of traditional publishing houses’ marketing strategies, it was important to keep up a fictional assumption of the existence of a ‘refined’ taste and the literature of national significance, and that every now and then we could graciously accept new members into this closed clique. In fact, this is precisely the kind of fiction the traditional houses have succeeded in destroying, because it no longer meets the needs of the current market conditions, as Eijkens’ comments aptly demonstrate. But isn’t it ironic that it is this kind of fiction that has made publishing poetry look like a fruitless endeavour, the idea that selling marginal literature constitutes some kind of aesthetic and financial risk.

In reality, things are now the other way round: literature published in small print runs has to sell lots of different titles in order to be profitable. Of course, it’s taken a certain amount of courage to start a publishing house based on this theory alone. The fact that I dared to do it links back to the idea you mentioned of conceptual art: at first it didn’t matter whether I succeeded or not, the important thing was just to give it a go. That same spirit of adventure is still at the heart of what I do, and it’s for that reason that I should say ntamo will never become a real publishing house. Whenever I manage to make ntamo look more like a real publishing house, it increases the pressure on me to do things differently.

TM: Finally, I’d like to give you a comparison. When people talk about ntamo with a sort of moral superiority, I’ve often heard them say it’s like a light-footed woman, and that getting involved with it would be like entering into a sinful relationship. On the other hand, a large publishing house is like the most desirable bachelor in town, with whom writers strive to enter a loyal marriage. The reality is that this partner too flirts with hundreds of other lovers, and nobody thinks there’s anything indecent about that.

LL: Exactly, because a large publishing company is a male! This is a pretty good metaphor. It’s clear that every book published by ntamo is something of a one-night stand, and I want to make sure it stays that way. And not just to make sure you have the freedom to sleep with other people too, but so that, if you want to, you can also sell the books you have published with ntamo somewhere else. All I ask is that, if you get me pregnant, I get to keep the baby.

TM: So in other words, I could effectively clone our shared child?

LL: Precisely.

Translated by David Hackston

Ladylike: woman riding sidesaddle (Journal des Dames, 1799)

I have a friend who is an avid reader and who also talks about the books he reads. But being a staunch conservative when it comes to reading habits, I just cannot consider him a true friend of literature. The reason: he only reads non-fiction books. To me, ‘being a reader’ means reading fiction and poetry.

But increasingly it seems that real literature is becoming more and more marginal, whereas non-fiction (self-help, history, travel guides, popular science, popular economics, cookbooks) is what sells and keeps the industry afloat. The recent Finnish ‘essay-boom’ is an example of this development, with young writers like Antti Nylén or Timo Hännikäinen gaining recognition as important contemporary authors solely through their work as essayists; Hännikäinen has also written poetry, but Nylén is strictly a non-fiction writer.

What is remarkable to me is that only twenty or thirty years ago such a thing would not have been possible: essayists were not ‘true’ authors. That honor was reserved, mostly, for novelists (and perhaps some poets). Nowadays it’s not even the lowest common denominator, membership of the Finnish Writers’ Union, which makes you an author. Now every biographer and cookbook-writer can claim that name for themselves, and it seems perfectly natural to everyone.

How and why do people’s reading habits change? The American writer and essayist Edgar Allan Poe once complained that ‘long poems’ were a flat contradiction in terms, since readers could not sustain for very long the excitement which true poetry demands. ‘After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags – fails – a revulsion ensues – and then the poem is, in effect and in fact, no longer such.’ Poe’s essay stands in the middle of a sea-change in our conceptions of what poetry and prose properly are. Before Poe, lyrics (short poems) were only a minor part of poetry, with the epic narrative poem regarded as the most accomplished and revered form; after Poe, lyrics – the short, intense lyrical moment – are what poetry is: ‘an elevating excitement of the Soul’.

I’ve always thought Poe’s idea was at the same time incredibly daft and remarkably ingenious. At first glance it seems crazy that poetry should be judged by the fickle attention spans of readers; if that were true, advertisers would be the best poets in the business. But the real question raised by Poe’s essay is not whether short or long poems are better. What he does is turn our presuppositions about art on their heads: the success of art is not dependent on the qualities of the work of art, but on our own personal experience of it. Before Poe, this was not the case.

Of course, he was not the only one advocating this kind of idea. But Poe was the first to connect the reader’s pleasure with the reader’s needs as a consumer of literature: literature is a commodity which must meet the demands of readers, and these demands are based on pleasure and entertainment. In the history of literature, this idea has provoked a change that is immense, and we are still in the middle of it. The changing status of non-fiction is only the most recent phase.
What we learn from this is that the nature of things is not fixed. History changes everything. There was a time when no decent lady would ride a horse, or let her daughters near one, because riding astride a horse was considered unbecoming for women. And although some women of status, even before the invention of the modern sidesaddle in the 1830s, did ride horses, horseback riding was more usually a sport for men: in war and at work soldiers, knights, cowboys, fox-hunting aristocrats and couriers rode horses. Women rode in carriages, far away from the brute animals. But after the invention of the sidesaddle things started to change drastically, and riding became the hobby of women as well – and today, at least in Finland, horseback riding is something that is mostly associated with teenage girls: no ice-hockey-playing, sausage-eating, weight-lifting man will ever go near a horse, because horses are for horse-crazy girls, not men.

Surely the invention of the sidesaddle is not the only reason why riding has become a girl’s sport. Another reason might be connected with the way in which developments in technology effect cultural norms. When there were no cars, controlling the wild nature of a horse was a masculine job; when cars were invented, the ‘power’ of the horse was transferred to the engines of these new vehicles, which then became a man’s job to handle. Women were left with the obsolete form of locomotion which, stripped of its utility and power, became a luxury hobby first for upper-class and later for middle-class girls.

What do horses and cars have to do with changes in reading habits? Well, for one, the fact is that fewer and less men seem to read, and literature is becoming more and more a women’s hobby. Is the same thing happening to literature as to horses? Surely not, you say: that is completely illogical. It must be a coincidence.

But history is illogical. Most people, it seems, believe that the things of this world have a fixed nature, and that any and all developments in things like society and the material world happen somehow ‘logically’: that things follow their nature, an order of things, such as up-down, down-up; hunger-nourishment; growing up organically like a plant from seed to flower; growing old; or whatever process our brains and biology and experience of the world has taught us to expect, such as the sun rising every day or the idea that all swans and all lambs are white.

Sometimes politics, markets, technological innovations, reading habits and social customs such as marriage and who rides the horse change in ways which seem illogical or counter-intuitive to those who believe in the fixed nature of things. Suddenly a black swan sails across the familiar pond. Gay marriage challenges the nature of wedlock. Hard work does not pay. The evolution of life on earth, or the creation of technological innovations, or the growth of markets, is found not to be steady growth after all, but a series of reactions to catastrophes, short bursts of creativity followed by long periods of stasis – ‘punctuated equilibrium, as the evolutionary theorist Steven Jay Gould was fond of saying.We cannot see these relationships and the causal structures which control the world, because they are outside our brain’s capacity, and contemplating their irrational nature causes us physical pain. We mostly find ourselves reacting to stimuli, or going the way of least resistance, trusting routine: human decision-making comes after the fact, no matter how well we believe we can predict the future. We live in a nice little fiction of safe roads and gentle horses. This is why the recent hubbub about ebooks changing our reading habits, something I’ve tried to contribute to, is just that: a fiction. Publishers and the industry are terrified of change and seek to control it by any means necessary, mostly by inventing fictions of economic catastrophe, of evil pirates preying on poor authors. On the positive side, consultants, journalists and essayists, like me, find an exciting subject to speculate on (I admit I’m doing this mostly for the fun of it), and gadget fans have new gadgets to fondle.

Ebooks, and ebook reading devices, won’t change anything in our reading habits, if we view them from the perspective of Poe’s theory. To wax a little cynical, books are not art but a pleasurable commodity for consumers with short attention spans. The growing volatility of the literary market, the intensity with fashions change, is testimony to this, but the change which has made our present book culture possible has already happened, long ago. In any case, most reading is already done online; there is already more text in the internet than in all the literature of the world.

What ebooks might change, apart from the economic model of publishing, is our understanding of literature: we might come to understand that literature is not bound to books. Electronic reading proves that literature can be produced, accessed and used in more ways than one – and by changing the technology of reading, ebooks might just be able to make men read again, because using gadgets and mastering technology is what men are supposed to enjoy. After all, ebooks make things easier and faster: like riding cars instead of horses.

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.

Jouni Avelin, editor of Kulttuurivihkot (‘Cultural notes’) magazine, said in this year’s first issue: ‘There are two themes in new Finnish fiction: men’s mid-life crises and young women’s erotic adventures – all Finnish literature is the literature of anxiety…. Sex is never nice, life stinks, shoes pinch….

‘The main character hates himself and his mother, who loathes her husband, who can’t stand his children or his parents, who hate everybody who enters the house, either through the door or the TV set. All suffer save suffering itself…. The novel is always the main character’s confessional: life is the same as life in other novels.’

It has to be admitted that playful, happy and sunlit fiction is slightly on the rare side, as we have cause to note, year after year, at the Books from Finland offices. Not surprisingly, as virtues are so much more boring than vices.

And the grimmest genre of all, crime literature, very popular in the Scandinavian countries – as well as in Finland – has been very exportable, as is proved by the best-selling lists of translated fiction all over the world. Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Liza Marklund, Håkan Nesser…. Leena Lehtolainen and Matti Rönkä are two Finnish writers of crime literature who have recently become popular in Germany, in particular.

(It is somewhat puzzling why crime fiction, entertaiments dealing with death, murder and violence, is so abundant in these ‘welfare societies’ in the North. Can anyone explain? Has anyone tried?)

In the first issue of 2006 of Books from Finland the literary scholar Michel Ekman wrote under the title ‘Life is too short’, expressing a personal (and unusual) view: ‘What literary genre is more slavishly bound by the compulsion of plot than the detective and the thriller? (And consequently, more stereotyped in its particulars and its structure.) Opera, of course, and one can just imagine the joy of watching Tosca without music.’

In contemporary Finnish drama, the nuclear family is definitely a huge favourite; skeletons rattle in the cupboards as grim primary relationships are taken out for an airing, the traumas of the Winter War are omnipresent, lovelessness continues unto the third and fourth generation and the fear of a global ecological disaster paralyses the young.

The grim stories occasionally bring to mind those dark 19th-century fables of those German fabulists, the Grimm brothers: in them people are burnt alive, chopped to pieces and tortured: early crime literatur – for children!

It’s not that life isn’t sometimes grim and that fiction shouldn’t be written about it – it’s just that the weighty realism of fiction often falls on to the reader’s neck like a ton of bricks, as do the repeated patterns of this modern miserability. (Thanks, Mr Chekhov, for your philosophy – to quote you freely, art should depict life as we see it in our dreams, not only just as it is or as it should be.)

Coming up soon on this site is a fantastic story for you to read, set in a (sc-fi-ish) future, about the similarities between silicone and human flesh, by Tiina Raevaara; it may not be a very sunny story, rather a grim(m) fable, but we think it’s exciting, and not without humour. We’ll be introducing some new drama, too – Finnish drama has been enjoying renewed success at home in recent years and is now also getting exported – with themes other than devastating family life.

You’ll find samples of fiction on this page in which life is not ‘the same as life in other novels’, so stay with us!

Jarl Hellemann 1920–2010. Photo: Pertti Nisonen (2009)

One of the grand old men of Finnish publishing, Jarl Hellemann, wrote in one of his own books: ‘Book publishing is by nature personified, a personal activity.

‘Most of the world’s old publishing houses still bear their founders’ names: Bonnier, Collins, Heinemann, Harper, Knopf, Bertelsmann, Werner Söderström, Gummerus. Americans ignorant of the exceptions to this rule among Finnish publishers still occasionally begin their letters, “Dear Mr Otava” or “Dear Mr Tammi”.’ (From Kustantajan näkökulma, ‘A publisher’s point of view’, Otava, published in Books from Finland 3/1999)

Hellemann himself was Mr Tammi for a long time; he started as a publishing editor at Tammi Publishing Company in 1945 and retired as managing director in 1982.

In 1955 he founded Keltainen kirjasto, the ‘Yellow Library’, an imprint of novels published since the First World War by prominent writers from all over the world. The first was Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton, the latest – published in 2009 – was The Disappeared by Kim Echlin. The series now contains more than 400 works, among them novels by 24 Nobel prize-winners.

Among the books in Keltainen kirjasto (list, in Finnish), Hellemann’s favourite was James Joyce’s Ulysses, translated by the poet and author Pentti Saarikoski in 1964. Hellemann continued choosing books for Keltainen kirjasto long after he retired.

Born in Copenhagen, Hellemann moved with his family to his mother’s home country, Finland, in the 1930s. Well-travelled and fluent in many languages, Hellemann himself published a novel (at the age of 25), three books on publishing and, in 1996, his memoirs.