Search results for "herbert lomas/www.booksfromfinland.fi/2004/09/no-need-to-go-anywhere"
Daring to dream
30 June 2004 | Fiction, poetry
Poems from Vaaksan päässä taivaasta (‘A span away from heaven’, Teos, 2004)
In the evenings they lit a candle on the cat’s grave
In the daytime they made a cosmological model
with a skipping rope
feet tapped the rhythm and its shadow
the rope slapped against the street
once in a while a rock flew
against a concrete wall
plunged from the oval galaxy’s edge
to the edge of space. More…
Romantic and political
30 June 2004 | Authors, Reviews
Photo: Heini Lehväslaiho
If I had to describe Tomi Kontio’s new book of poems, Vaaksan päässä taivaasta (‘A span away from heaven’, Teos, 2004, page 93) in ten words or less, I would say that it is a succession of deep breaths taken between catastrophes great or small.
Since I have a few more words at my disposal here, I’ll also say that it meets every expectation set up by his previous three volumes of poetry: sonorous language, an essentially Romantic but not egocentric worldview, and extraordinary skill in combining straightforward narrative with spectacularly effortless runs of metaphors, as in these lines from the poem ‘Pietà’: More…
Nordic prize
11 December 2009 | In the news
The Finnish nominees for the Nordic Council’s Literary Prize, to be awarded in March 2010, are the novels Puhdistus (‘Purge’, the winner of the Finlandia Prize for Fiction in 2008) by Sofi Oksanen, and Glitterscenen (‘The Glitter Scene’, 2009) by Monika Fagerholm.
The prize, worth €47,000, will be selected by a jury from a shortlist of 11 works from the Nordic countries. The most recent Finnish winner of the prize was Kari Hotakainen’s Juoksuhaudantie (‘Trench Road’, which also won the Finlandia Prize for Fiction) in 2004.
What Finland read in February
28 March 2013 | In the news
Artist and painter Hannu Väisänen (born 1951) began writing an autobiographical series of novels in 2004. Born in the northern town of Oulu, he colourfully described his somewhat bleak childhood in a family of five children headed by a widowed soldier father. His fourth novel, Taivaanvartijat (‘The guardians of heaven’, Otava), is number one on the February list of best-selling Finnish fiction titles compiled by the Finnish Booksellers’ Association.
Number two is former number one, the Finlandia Prize -winning novel Is (‘Ice’, in Finnish Jää; also to be published in English, possibly later this year) by Ulla-Lena Lundberg.
The latest comic book by Pertti Jarla about the inhabitants of Fingerpori (‘Fingerborg’, Arktinen Banaani), Fingerpori 6, was number three.
In first and second place on the translated fiction list were Stephen King – (11/22/63) and J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit or There and Back Again).
At the top of the non-fiction list is, for the second time, Kaiken käsikirja (‘Handbook of everything’, Ursa) by astronomer and popular writer Esko Valtaoja. In these hard times Finns seems also to be interested in economics, so number two was Talous ja utopia (‘Economics and utopia’, Docendo) by Sixten Korkman, professor and specialist in international and national economics.
The house the seniors built
27 November 2009 | Reviews
Yours and mine: the common dining room at Sprint
Maija Dahlström – Sirkka Minkkinen
Loppukiri. Vaihtoehtoista asumista seniori-iässä
[Sprint: alternative living for seniors]
Helsinki: WSOY, 2009. 232 p., ill.
ISBN 978-9510-4322-9
€ 32.90, paperback
‘Your elderly mother just told you she fell in the bathroom last night at 4 a.m. Now what?’ advertises the Visiting Nurse Service of New York in the New York Times. Aging people and their desire to live in their own homes is a pressing question around the world. People feel concern over their own living arrangements and those of their loved ones. Living arrangements somewhere between being in one’s own home or in a care facility are sought by many, but there are few of these options available. More…
Monika Fagerholm: Lolauppochner [Lola upside down]
20 September 2012 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Lolauppochner
[Lola upside down]
Helsinki: Schildts & Söderströms, 2012. 461 p.
ISBN 978-951-52-2997-7
€ 31, hardback
Lola ylösalaisin
Suomentanut [Translated into Finnish by]: Liisa Ryömä
Helsinki: Teos, 2012. 300 p.
ISBN 978-951-851-480-3
€28.40, hardback
Lolauppochner (‘Lola upside down’) is a more authentic crime novel than the same author’s Den amerikanska flickan (English translation: The American Girl, 2004) and Glitterscenen (The Glitter Scene, 2009), though they too wove their dense fiction around an old crime. Readers who are at ease in Fagerholm’s luxuriant wordscapes with their tragic teens, country bumpkins and summer visitors will still be able to find their way around the small community where Jana Marton, a teenage girl on the way to her job at the local store, discovers the corpse of a boy, a key player among the local gilded youth. The novel’s opening, and many sections that follow, are extremely effective, with sharp and lightning-swift characterisations and a fine intuition for both the fear and the excitement in the social circle where the murder turns up hidden connections like worms from the soil. But the novel is too long for its own good – somewhere towards the end it ceases to gain depth, and the gallery of characters starts to feel too big. All the same, this book is a must for Fagerholm’s readership at home and abroad. A bonus for locals – and attentive outsiders – is present in the outlines of the small seaside town of Ekenäs that can be glimpsed behind the text. They supply a kind of physical magic that rubs off on much else besides – characters, moods and sense of place.
Translated by David McDuff
Erkki Lampén: Neljä retkeä läpi Suomen [Four trips across Finland]
15 March 2010 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Neljä retkeä läpi Suomen. Kävellen – pyöräillen – hiihtäen – meloen
[Four trips across Finland. On foot – by bicycle – on skis – by kayak]
Helsinki: Tammi, 2009. 272 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-31-4988-8
€ 25, hardback
In the spring of 2000, a downbeat 40-year-old man sat musing on the meaning of life when an idea suddenly came to him: why not walk from Helsinki to the Arctic Ocean? In his diary of this trek, which covered more than seven weeks and over a thousand kilometres, the journalist and writer Erkki Lampén describes the landscape, people, events and his own thoughts along the journey. Lampén made another three journeys (in 2003, 2004 and 2006) travelling by bicycle, on skis and by kayak, sleeping in a tent, in rustic cabins, in motels and hotels. His circular cycle journey aimed to follow Finland’s national borders as closely as possible; on skis he covered the distance from Porvoo on the south coast to Utsjoki in the far north; he then paddled his kayak from Lapland to the Gulf of Finland (this journey required plenty of wheeling the vessel from one river or lake to another). Lampén’s diary entries convey an entertaining blend of a realistic battle for survival, philosophising, joy, fury and humour.
An officer and a gentleman
31 December 2004 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews
A moment in the Chinese garden: from left, Eric Macartney. Kashgar, China, 1906. Photo: C.G.E. Mannerheim
A photograph from 1906 prompted Markus Nummi to write a 500-page novel about the people of the caravan route in China. One of his characters, the Finnish photographer and spy-explorer Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, in reality later became Finland’s sixth president. Where does fiction end and history begin? Anna-Leena Nissilä investigates
The city of Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan in the year 1906: a group of French explorers and a crowd of Swedish missionaries from the local province, along with other members of the European community and their children, have gathered together in an orchard to take a picture. Midilimanglar, keep still, says the photographer, Baron Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, and presses the shutter release. The admonition is without effect; the picture turns out restless. Little Eric can’t hold still; a baby girl is grabbing at a man’s hat; the adults are looking past the camera. For some reason the host of the event, an Englishman named Macartney, is standing a pace away from the rest of the group.
Almost a century later, the author Markus Nummi (born 1959) runs across Mannerheim’s snapshot and becomes inspired. He tells how the expansive and thematically wide-ranging historical novel Kiinalainen puutarha (‘The Chinese garden’, Otava, 2004) began to form around the photograph:
‘The photograph is the starting point for everything, the intersection and blink of an eye in which all of my story’s central characters are close to another. I was fascinated by the picture’s bustle: people looking every which way, all the fumbling about. And when you look at the picture more closely, you start to see different kinds of connections; when you look at where these people were coming from and where they went in their lives, you can start to imagine what is hidden behind the picture. I started to contemplate what the photographer saw at the moment the picture was taken, maybe angels?’ More…
Marja-Leena Tiainen: Kahden maailman tyttö [The girl from two worlds]
18 January 2012 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Kahden maailman tyttö
[The girl from two worlds]
Helsinki: Tammi, 2011. 261 p.
ISBN 978-951-31-5937-5
€ 26.65, hardback
Marja-Leena Tiainen (born 1951) has dealt with unemployment, immigration, and racism in her works, in ways that are accessible to her young readership. She researches her topics with care. The idea for this book dates back to 2004, when the author made the acquaintance of a Muslim girl who lived in a reception centre in eastern Finland; her experiences fed into Tara’s story. Tiainen’s central theme, ‘honour’ violence in the Muslim community, is surprisingly similar to Jari Tervo’s Layla (WSOY, 2011). Tiainen’s is a traditional story about a girl growing up and surviving, but the novel’s strong points are the authentic description of everyday multiculturalism, and the intensity of the narration. The reader identifies with Tara’s balancing act, which she must carry out in the crossfire of her father’s authority, family tradition, and her own dreams. In spite of everything, the community also becomes a source of security and support for Tara. The narrative arc is coherent and, despite the numerous overlapping time-frames, the tension is sustained right up to the final, conciliatory solution.
Translated by Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah
Fatherlands, mother tongues?
12 April 2013 | Letter from the Editors
Patron saint of translators: St Jerome (d. 420), translating the Bible into Latin. Pieter Coecke van Aelst, ca 1530. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo: Wikipedia
Finnish is spoken mostly in Finland, whereas English is spoken everywhere. A Finnish writer, however, doesn’t necessarily write in any of Finland’s three national languages (Finnish, Swedish and Sámi).
What is a Finnish book, then – and (something of particular interest to us here at the Books from Finland offices) is it the same thing as a book from Finland? Let’s take a look at a few examples of how languages – and fatherlands – fluctuate.
Hannu Rajaniemi has Finnish as his mother tongue, but has written two sci-fi novels in English, which were published in England. A Doctor in Physics specialising in string theory, Rajaniemi works at Edinburgh University and lives in Scotland. His books have been translated into Finnish; the second one, The Fractal Prince / Fraktaaliruhtinas (2012) was in March 2013 on fifth place on the list of the best-selling books in Finland. (Here, a sample from his first book, The Quantum Thief, 2011, Gollancz.)
Emmi Itäranta, a Finn who lives in Canterbury, England, published her first novel, Teemestarin tarina (‘The tea master’s book’, Teos, 2012), in Finland. She rewrote it in English and it will be published as Memory of Water in England, the United States and Australia (HarperCollins Voyager) in 2014. Translations into six other languages will follow. More…