Search results for "herbert lomas/www.booksfromfinland.fi/2004/09/2010/10/riikka-pulkkinen-totta-true"
Riikka Pulkkinen: Totta [True]
22 October 2010 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Totta
[True]
Helsinki: Otava, 2010. 333 p.
ISBN 978-951-1-22965-0
€ 31,40, hardback
The second novel by Riikka Pulkkinen (born 1980) is a comprehensive work that tackles big themes: love, death and rejection. Pulkkinen’s particular strengths as an author are her richly nuanced language and her mastery of structure. While the ending provides food for thought, the book is an enjoyable novel about childhood, growing up, daring to love and live. Martti, a seventy-year-old artist, is caring for his sick wife, a highly respected psychologist. Martti and Elsa have had a long and happy marriage. Then it emerges that Martti had a long affair with their live-in childminder Eeva, whose story grows into one of the main plot strands of the book. Their love story takes place against the background of the 1960s, when the waves passing through European society reached Finland as well. Pulkkinen skilfully brings the perspective of the now grown-up daughter Eleonoora into the mix, as she views her early childhood under the care of two mother figures. At the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair translation rights to Totta were sold to six countries, which at least goes to show that there is interesting literature to be found in the Nordic countries beyond the ubiquitous crime novels.
On Matti Pulkkinen
30 June 1978 | Archives online, Authors
Matti Pulkkinen. Photo: Gummerus
Matti Pulkkinen’s grandfather was born in 1842 in a forest village close to the Russian border, in an area which could only be reached by water. When he grew up he became a tar-burner, a traditional occupation in north-east Finland. Pulkkinen’s father worked for the Otava Publishing Company in the early years of the present century, a time when ordinary Finns were beginning to show a real interest in literature. In his home in one of the most remote parts of North Karelia, he assembled a library which ranged from Mark Twain to the detective stories of G. K. Chesterton. He was 70 when his youngest son, Matti, was born in 1944. Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche were the two writers whose works did most to stimulate Matti Pulkkinen’s enthusiasm for literature. After leaving school he set out to see the world. He worked as a lumberjack, a primary school teacher, a statistics clerk in a gynaecological hospital, a bank teller, an accounts clerk, and later as a carpenter, took part in the restoration of the medieval church at Vanaja. From 1969 to 1971 Pulkkinen worked as a nurse in mental hospitals in Frankfurt, West Berlin and Bern. While in Switzerland he became interested in Jungian psychology and modern group therapy.
Pulkkinen’s novel, Ja pesäpuu itki (‘And the nesting-tree wept’, Gummerus), published in 1977, was awarded the J.H. Erkko Prize for the best first novel of the year and the Kalevi Jäntti Memorial Prize. It rapidly became a best seller and has already had two reprints. More…
Jonna Pulkkinen: Kieltolaki. Kielletyn viinan historia Suomessa. [Prohibition. A history of prohibited liquor in Finland.]
29 June 2015 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Jonna Pulkkinen
Kieltolaki. Kielletyn viinan historia Suomessa. [Prohibition. A history of prohibited liquor in Finland.]
Helsinki: Minerva, 2015. 213pp., ill.
ISBN 978-952-312-112-6
€32,90, hardback
Prohibition of the making and selling of strong liquor was in force in Finland between 1919 and 1932. In this approachable book, the journalist and non-fiction writer Jonna Pulkkinen charts Finnish attitudes to alcohol over the ages and describes the origin and effects of prohibition. Total abstinence was popular in Finland in the second half of the 19th century, and was adopted in particular by the working class. Limits on alcoholic consumption were first imposed as early as the First World War. When a prohibition law that had been passed a couple of years earlier came into effect in newly independent Finland in 1919, however, support had already begun to dwindle. Home stills proliferated, smuggling from abroad was considerable and broadly accepted, and enforcing the law was difficult. Pulkkinen has numerous interesting and even comical examples that flouted the law on prohibition. The law was broken in all social classes, the use of liquor and crime increased throughout the country, and taxation income on alcohol was lost. As public criticism grew, an advisory referendum was held in 1931, and as a result the prohibition law was abolished the following year.
And the winner is…?
27 March 2012 | This 'n' that
Playing your cards right: Todd Zuniga talks to Riikka Pulkkinen on 20 March in Helsinki. Photo: courtesy/T. Zuniga
The writer Johanna Sinisalo’s words lash the stage like the tail of Pessi the troll in her best-known novel. The novelist Riikka Pulkkinen bursts into deconstructive dance. The singer Anni Mattila translates the poet Teemu Manninen’s explosive poetic frolics into rhythmic dictations and the Finlandia Prize-winning author Rosa Liksom’s conductor’s glittering moustaches see the audience off on a train journey to Moscow.
On a March evening, a Literary Death Match has begun in the Korjaamo Culture Factory in Helsinki’s old tramsheds. The creation of the American author and journalist Todd Zuniga, the Literary Death Match combines an evening of readings with stand-up comedy as well as the judging familiar from reality TV shows.
‘It all started with me eating sushi with two of my friends and talking about some of the readings we’d been to. We all loved literature and loved to listen to writers reading from their own work. But the audience was always the same circle of people. We wanted to expand it beyond literary circles,’ Zuniga explains. More…
Poetic excercises by the sea: Herbert Lomas (re)visited
21 November 2009 | Authors, Interviews
Poet ahoy: Herbert Lomas in Aldeburgh. Photo: Soila Lehtonen
The prize-winning British poet Herbert Lomas has been translating Finnish poetry – much of it for Books from Finland – for more than thirty years. Soila Lehtonen, our Editor-in-Chief and his long-time collaborator, interviews him on the occasion of the publication of his collected poems, A Casual Knack of Living
The shoreline and the seaside promenade stretch out along the windy East Suffolk coast in Aldeburgh, where Herbert Lomas lives in a pink house called North Gable.
In summer thousands of tourists frequent the picturesque village, particularly during the music festival in June, founded in 1948 by the local composer Benjamin Britten. A poetry festival, too, takes place every autumn, this year for the 21st time.
Herbert – Bertie to those, like us at Books from Finland, who know him well – has just published a handsome tome of poetry, A Casual Knack of Living, containing poems from nine earlier collections plus a selection of previously unpublished poems, entitled Nightlights. The home of his publisher, Arc Publications, is in the village where he was born, 85 years ago, Todmorden in the Pennines. More…
Riikka Pelo: Jokapäiväinen elämämme [Our everyday life]
13 June 2013 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Jokapäiväinen elämämme
[Our everyday life]
Helsinki: Teos, 2013. 526 p.
ISBN 978-951-851-389-9
35.90€, hardback
At the centre of Riikka Pelo’s second novel are the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) and her daughter Ariadna Efron (1912–1975). This broad historical novel depicts the mental landscape of Russia during the period between the two great wars, from the 1920s to the 1940s. The mother is a religious believer and idealist, her daughter a more pragmatic empiricist. The family’s fate is controlled by the Soviet state apparatus, which sends it into exile in Paris where Tsvetaeva’s husband Sergei Efron takes a job as a secret police informer in an organisation devoted to the repatriation of Soviet emigrés. In the 1930s they return to Moscow, where life under the watchful eye of Stalin is filled with difficulty and paranoia. Pelo portrays the awkward relationship between mother and daughter with particular vividness. The indisputable star of the family is the mother – her ambition extends to her daughter, who to her disappointment is more interested in the visual arts than in poetry. The historical characters of Pelo’s impressive novel live their contradictory lives in decades of social upheaval.
Translated by David McDuff
Finland(ia) of the present day
2 December 2010 | In the news
Mikko Rimminen. Photo: Heini Lehväslaiho
The Finlandia Prize for Fiction 2010, worth €30,000, was awarded on 2 December to Mikko Rimminen (born 1975) ; his novel Nenäpäivä (‘Nose day’, Teos) was selected by the cultural journalist and editor Minna Joenniemi from a shortlist of six.
Appointed by the Finnish Book Foundation, the prize jury (Marianne Bargum, former publishing director of Söderströms, researcher and writer Lari Kotilainen and communications consultant Kirsi Piha) shortlisted the following novels:
Joel Haahtela: Katoamispiste (‘Vanishing point’, Otava), Markus Nummi: Karkkipäivä (‘Candy day’, Otava), Riikka Pulkkinen: Totta (‘True’, Teos), Mikko Rimminen: Nenäpäivä (‘Nose day’, Teos), Alexandra Salmela: 27 eli kuolema tekee taiteilijan (’27 or death makes an artist’, Teos) and Erik Wahlström: Flugtämjaren (in Finnish translation, Kärpäsenkesyttäjä, ‘The fly tamer’, Schildts). Here’s the FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange link to the jury’s comments.
Joenniemi noted the shortlisted books all involve problems experienced by people of different ages. How to be a consenting adult? How do adults listen to children? Contemporary society has been pushing the age limits of ‘youth’ upwards so that, for example, what used to be known as middle age now feels quite young. And, for example, in Erik Wahlström’s Flugtämjaren (now also on the shortlist for the Nordic Literature Prize 2011) the aged, paralysed 19th-century author J.L. Runeberg appears full of hatred: being revered as Finland’s national poet didn’t make him particularly noble-minded.
According to Joenniemi, Rimminen’s novel ‘takes a stand gently’ in its portrayal of contemporary life – in a city where a lonely person’s longing for human contacts takes on tragicomical proportions. Joenniemi finds Rimminen’s language ‘uniquely overflowing’. Its humour poses itself against the prevailing negative attitude, turning black into something lighter.
Rimminen has earlier published two collections of poems and two novels (Pussikaljaromaani, ‘Sixpack novel’, 2004, and Pölkky, ‘The log’, 2007) . Pussikaljaromaani has been translated into Dutch, German, Latvian, Russian and Swedish.
In memoriam Herbert Lomas 1924–2011
23 September 2011 | In the news
Herbert Lomas. Photo: Soila Lehtonen
Herbert Lomas, English poet, literary critic and translator of Finnish literature, died on 9 September, aged 87.
Born in the Yorkshire village of Todmorden, Bertie lived for the past thirty years in the small town of Aldeburgh by the North Sea in Suffolk. (Read an interview with him in Books from Finland, November 2009.)
After serving two years in India during the war, Bertie taught English first in Greece, then in Finland, where he settled for 13 years. His translations – as well as many by his American-born wife Mary Lomas (died 1986) – were published from as early as 1976 in Books from Finland.
Bertie’s first collection of poetry (of a total of ten) appeared in 1969. His Letters in the Dark (1986) was an Observer book of the year, and he was the recipient of several literary prizes. His collected poems, A Casual Knack of Living, appeared in 2009.
In England Bertie won the Poetry Society’s 1991 biennial translation award for one of his anthologies, Contemporary Finnish Poetry. The Finnish government recognised his work in making Finnish literature better known when it made him a Knight First Class of Order of the White Rose of Finland in 1987.
To Books from Finland, he made an invaluable contribution over almost 35 years – an incredibly long time in the existence of a small literary magazine. The number of Finnish authors and poets whose work he made available in English is countless: classics, young writers, novelists, poets, dramatists.
Bertie’s speciality was ‘difficult’ poets, whose challenge lay in their use of end-rhymes, special vocabulary, rhythm or metre. He loved music, so the sounds and tones of words, their musicality, were among the things that fascinated him. Kirsi Kunnas’ hilarious, limerick-inspired children’s rhymes were among his best translations – although actually nothing in them would make the reader think that the originals might not have been written in English. A sample: There once was a crane / whose life was led / as a uniped. / It dangled its head / and from time to time said:/ It would be a pain / if I looked like a crane. (From Tiitiäisen satupuu, ‘Tittytumpkin’s fairy tree’, 1956, published in Books from Finland 1/1979.)
Bertie also translated work by Eeva-Liisa Manner, Paavo Haavikko, Mirkka Rekola, Pentti Holappa, Ilpo Tiihonen, Aaro Hellaakoski and Juhani Aho among many, many others; for example, the prolific writer Arto Paasilinna’s best-known novel, Jäniksen vuosi / The Year of the Hare, appeared in his translation in 1995. Johanna Sinisalo’s unusually (in the Finnish context) non-realist troll novel Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi / Not Before Sundown, subsequently translated into many other languages, appeared in 2003. His last translation for Books from Finland was of new poems by Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen in 2009.
It was always fun to talk with Bertie about translations, language(s), writers, books, and life in general. He himself said he was a schoolboy at heart – which is easy to believe. He was funny, witty, inventive, impulsive, sometimes impatient – and thoroughly trustworthy: he just knew how to find the precise word, tone of voice, figure of speech. He had perfect poetic pitch. As dedicated and incredibly versatile translators are really hard to find anywhere, we all realise our good fortune – both for Finnish literature and for ourselves – to have worked, and enjoyed with such enjoyment, with Bertie.
Poet Aaro Hellaakoski (1893–1956) was not a self-avowed follower of Zen, but his last poems, in particular, show surprisingly close contacts with the philosophy. ‘Secrets of existence are revealed once one ceases seeking them’, the literary scholar Tero Tähtinen wrote in an essay published alongside Bertie’s new Hellaakoski translations in (the printed) Books from Finland (2/2007). Bertie was fond of Hellaakoski, whose existential verses fascinated him; among his 2007 translations is The new song (from Vartiossa, ‘On guard’, 1941):
The new song |
Uusi laulu |
| No compulsion, not a sting. | Ei mitään pakota, ei polta. |
| My body doesn’t seem to be. | On ruumis niinkuin ei oisikaan. |
| As if a nightbird started to sing | Kuin alkais kaukovainioilta |
| its far shy carol from some tree – | yölintu arka lauluaan |
| as if from its dim chrysalis | kuin hyönteistoukka heräämässä |
| a little grub awoke to bliss – | ois kotelossaan himmeässä |
| or someone struck from off his shoulder | kuin hartioiltaan joku loisi |
| a miserable old bugaboo – | pois köyhän muodon entisen |
| and a weird flying creature | ja outo lentäväinen oisi |
| stretched a fragile wing and flew. | ja nostais siiven kevyen. |
| Ah limitless bright light: | Oi kimmellystä ilman pielen. |
| the gift of lyrical flight! | Oi rikkautta laulun kielen. |
The books that sold
11 March 2011 | In the news
-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!
Books from Finland to take archive form
22 May 2015 | In the news
The following is a press release from the Finnish Literature Society.
The Finnish Literature Society is to cease publication of the online journal Books from Finland with effect 1 July 2015 and will focus on making material which has been gathered over almost 50 years more widely available to readers.
Books from Finland, which presents Finnish literature in English, has appeared since 1967. Until 2008 the journal appeared four times a year in a paper version, and subsequently as a web publication. Over the decades Books from Finland has featured thousands of Finnish books, different literary genres and contemporary writers as well as classics. Its significance as a showcase for our literature has been important.
The major task of recent years has been the digitisation of past issues of the journal to form an electronic archive. The archive will continue to serve all interested readers at www.booksfromfinland.fi; it is freely available and may be found on the FILI website (www.finlit.fi/fili).
Much is written in English and other languages about Finnish literature: reviews, interviews and features appear in even the biggest international publications. The need for the presentation of our literature has changed. Among the ways in which FILI continues to develop its remit is to focus communications on international professionals in the book field, on publishers and on agents.
The reasons for ceasing publication of Books from Finland are also economic. Government aid to the Finnish literature information centre FILI, which has functioned as the journal’s home, has been cut by ten per cent.
Books from Finland was published by Helsinki University Library from 1967 to 2002, when the Finnish Literature Society took on the role of publisher. FILI has been the body within the Finnish Literature Society that has been responsible for the journal’s administration, and it is from FILI’s budget that the journal’s expeses have been paid.
Enquiries: Tuomas M.S. Lehtonen, Secretary General of the Finnish Literature Society, telephone +358 40 560 9879.
Book-giving time!
12 November 2010 | In the news
The few weeks before Christmas are when most books are bought in Finland, so shortlists of literary prizes start popping up in November.
All the juries of the three biggest prizes – worth €30,000 each, awarded by the Finnish Book Foundation – have now published their shortlists: the Finlandia Prize for Non-Fiction, the Finlandia Junior Prize and the Finlandia Prize for Fiction.
The winners, each chosen by one person, will be announced in December. This FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange newsletter link will take you to the jury members’ assessments of the shortlisted non-fiction and Junior Prize works.
The following six novels ended up on the Finlandia Prize for Fiction list:
Joel Haahtela: Katoamispiste (‘Vanishing point’, Otava), Markus Nummi: Karkkipäivä (‘Candy day’, Otava), Riikka Pulkkinen: Totta (‘True’, Teos), Mikko Rimminen: Nenäpäivä (‘Nose day’, Teos), Alexandra Salmela: 27 eli kuolema tekee taiteilijan (’27 or death makes an artist’, Teos) and Erik Wahlström: Flugtämjaren (in Finnish translation, Kärpäsenkesyttäjä, ‘The fly tamer’, Schildts). Here’s the FILI link to the jury’s comments.
What Finland read in November
17 December 2010 | In the news
Superheroes: Tatu and Patu by Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen
In November the latest thriller by Ilkka Remes, Shokkiaalto (‘Shock wave’, WSOY) topped the Booksellers’ Association of Finland’s list of the best-selling Finnish fiction. Sofi Oksanen’s prize-winning, much-translated 2008 novel Puhdistus (Purge, WSOY), has not left the best-selling list since it was awarded the Finlandia Prize for Fiction this autumn and was now number two.
Riikka Pulkkinen’s novel Totta (‘True’, Otava) was number three, and Tuomas Kyrö’s colllection of episodes from a grumpy old man’s life as told by himself, Mielensäpahoittaja (‘Taking offense’, WSOY), from last spring, occupied fourth place.
A new novel, Harjunpää ja rautahuone (‘Harjunpää and the iron room’, Otava), by the grand old man of Finnish crime, ex-policeman Matti Yrjänä Joensuu, was number five.
The most popular children’s book was a new picture book about two inventive and curious brothers, Tatu ja Patu supersankareina (‘Tatu and Patu as superheroes’, Otava) by Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen.
On the translated fiction list were books by, among others, Ildefonso Falcones, Jo Nesbø, Lee Child, Stephen King, Paulo Coelho and Paul Auster.
The non-fiction list included the traditional annual encyclopaedia Mitä missä milloin (‘What, where, when’, Otava, second place) as well as a political skit entitled Kuka mitä häh (‘Who what eh’, Otava) by Pekka Ervasti and Timo Haapala – the latter sold better, coming in at number one. In November the latest thriller by Ilkka Remes, Shokkiaalto (‘Shock wave’, WSOY) topped the Booksellers’ Association of Finland’s list of the best-selling Finnish fiction.
The private I? Me and my home
17 June 2014 | Reviews
Art Nouveau with a modern twist. Photo: Avaimia ajattomiin suomalaisiin sisustuksiin / Jaanis Kerkis
Avaimia ajattomiin suomalaisiin sisustuksiin
[Keys to timeless Finnish interiors]
Design: Hanni Koroma, text: Sami Sykkö, photographs: Jaanis Kerkis
Helsinki: Gummerus, 2014. 123 pp., ill.
ISBN 978-951-20-9507-0
€32.90, hardback
Katja Lindroos
MOMO. Koti elementissään
[MOMO. The home in its element]
Photography: Riikka Kantinkoski, Niclas Warius
Helsinki: Siltala, 2013. 154 pp., ill.
ISBN 978-952-234-164-8
€32.90, hardback
www.momokoti.fi (in Finnish only)
‘Interior decoration’ has become an extremely popular pastime in Finland – as elsewhere where the standard of living allows it.
Innumerable magazines and blogs keep churning out photos of rooms with large white, cushioned sofas, glossy white kitchen cabinets and white floors on which furniture seems to float forlornly. Walls are decorated with wooden or metallic letters forming words: love; home, sweet home. In the kitchen the bread bin bears the word BREAD. (Bookcases, with actual books, are rare.)
Why is it that in our age which worships ‘individuality’, trends rule? More…
Rainer Knapas: Kunskapens rike. Helsingfors universitetsbibliotek – Nationalbiblioteket 1640–2010 [In the kingdom of knowledge. Helsinki University Library – National Library of Finland 1640–2010]
9 August 2012 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Kunskapens rike. Helsingfors universitetsbibliotek – Nationalbiblioteket 1640–2010
Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2012. 462 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-583-244-3
€54, hardback
Tiedon valtakunnassa. Helsingin yliopiston kirjasto – Kansalliskirjasto 1640–2010
[In the kingdom of knowledge. Helsinki University Library – National Library of Finland 1640–2010]
Suomennos [Finnish translation by]: Liisa Suvikumpu
Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2012. 461 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-222-272-5
€54, hardback
The National Library of Finland was founded in 1640 as the library of Turku Academy. In 1827 it was destroyed by fire: only 828 books were preserved. In 1809 Finland was annexed from Sweden by Russia, and the collection was moved to the new capital of Helsinki, where it formed the basis of the University Library. The neoclassical main building designed by Carl Ludwig Engel is regarded as one of Europe’s most beautiful libraries and was completed in 1845, with an extension added in 1906. Its collections include the Finnish National Bibliography, an internationally respected Slavonic Library, the private Monrepos collection from 18th-century Russia, and the valuable library of maps compiled by the arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. Renamed in 2006 as Kansalliskirjasto – the National Library of Finland – this institution, which is open to general public, now contains a collection of over three million volumes as well as a host of online services. This beautifully illustrated book by historian and writer Rainer Knapas provides an interesting exposition of the library’s history, the building of its collections and building projects, and also a lively portrait of its talented – and sometimes eccentric – librarians.
Translated by David McDuff
Time to go
29 June 2015 | Greetings
[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”static” fversion=”8.0.0″ movie=”https://booksfromfinland.fi/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Books_Kesabanneri_2015.swf” width=”590″ height=”240″ targetclass=”flashmovie”] 
[/kml_flashembed]
Animation: Joonas Väänänen
We’ve often thought of editing Books from Finland as being a bit like throwing a party.
It’s our job to find a place to hold it, send out the invitations and provide the food and drink.
It’s your job to show up and enjoy.
Books from Finland is a party that’s been running since 1967 – for nearly fifty years.
In that time, we’ve served up almost 10,000 printed pages and 1,500 posts, a wide-ranging menu of the best Finnish fiction, non-fiction, plays and drama, accompanied by essays, articles, interviews and reviews.
We’ve had a ball, and to judge by the letters and emails we’ve received from many of you, you’ve had a good time too.
But now it’s time to go: the landlord, to stretch the metaphor, has called in the lease on our party venue. Faced with funding cuts in the budget of FILI – the Finnish Literature Exchange, which has since 2003 been Books from Finland’s home – the Finnish Literature Society has decided to cease publication of Books from Finland with effect 1 July 2015. Our archive will remain online at this address, and the digitisation project will continue. We won’t be adding any new material, though; this is, literally, the last post.
The party may be over, the lights and music turned off – but what about the partygoers?
They are doing what partygoers always do: they – we – are moving on.
Readers and writers, photographers and illustrators, everyone who’s helped, supported and enjoyed Books from Finland, thank you!
So long. See you around.
Hildi Hawkins & Leena Lahti