The Lost Key

Sanna Mander's amazing Nyckelknipan /Avain hukassa - written by its author in parallel Swedish and Finnish versions - won this year's Finlandia Junior Prize.

The global book

In Hbl, Philip Teir reflects on the increasing internationalization and globalization of contemporary fiction, and wonders whether we are heading for a new literary world where national identity doesn't count for much:

Perhaps part of the explanation for Sofi Oksanen's success is that she is one of the first to try their hand at taking stock of the new Europe?

Slovak-born Alexandra Salmela's shortlisting for the Finlandia Prize could perhaps be seen as a sign of a coming trend... her new novel 27 - Eli Kuolema Tekee Taitelijan (27 - Or Death Makes an Artist) is not particularly rooted in one spot, but is a sort of cacophonous young person's novel that could have been published in almost any language at all...

...It's an interesting thought: are we heading towards a future in which the national literature project dissolves and we get literature that is trans-European? That may be too optimistic...

Vanishing Point

Joel Haahtela’s novel Katoamispiste (Vanishing Point) – excerpts from which I posted in my own translation in some earlier posts to this blog – has been selected as a nomination for this year’s Finlandia Prize, FILI reports.

Lost and found

In Hufvudstadsbladet's Plock & Fynd, Annika Hällsten considers the slightly uusual friendship between the Swedish feminist Ellen Key and the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, and Pia Ingström reflects on some meaningful remarks cast in her direction by two literary men at the recent award ceremony for the Finlandia Prize (won this year by Antti Hyry). There is also a discussion of Slow Reading in Finland...

Finlandia candidates announced - 2

FILI has issued more details of the Finlandia fiction prize nominees and their books:

Turkka Hautala: Salo (Gummerus)

The theme of Turkka Hautala’s debut novel is one of human destiny.One by one the residents of Salo take their turns speaking, in a chain-like structure. The spectrum of viewpoints extends from the anguish of a factory manager to the everyday compassion of the seller at a sausage kiosk, but the personalities merge into a cohesive whole. Hautala takes ordinary people as his characters and he knows how to see the humorous side of their actions. The novel is written in supple language using different registers and dialects. Salo builds a mosaic portrait of the declining Finland of today, and the author’s gaze is sharp and fresh.

Kari Hotakainen: Ihmisen osa (The Human Lot, Siltala)

At a bookfair, a writer meets a button seller who sells him her life story for 7,000 euros. Along with the sale, the reader receives a large slice of Finnish life and the history of entrepreneurship. The small business owner’s grind grind is replaced nowadays by endless meetings and imagination for sale. Like its characters, broken under the blows of an unrestricted market economy, Kari Hotakainen’s novel is customer-oriented but strongly resistant to change, critical of society, warm and intelligent.

Antti Hyry: Uuni (The Oven, Otava)

In Hyry’s novel, the reader’s interest is not directed to a plot or character portraits. There are no dramatic turning points in this description of the construction of a baking oven. On the surface,Hyry’s writing is reminiscent of the kinds of modernists who build their texts on simple perceptions of the world of objects in order to emphasize incompleteness in their sketches of the world. Instead, the person in Hyry’s book is taking concrete steps to establish a home in the world. His tasks gain their significance from the meaningful places of life in its entirety. This portrait of everyday life thus opens out into a cosmos where the central character is living the life he was meant to live.

Marko Kilpi: Kadotetut (The Lost Ones, Gummerus)

Kilpi’s work explodes the conventions of the detective genre,because attention is focused not on the intellectual puzzle of solving a crime or understanding a criminal’s motivation. Instead, crime is taken seriously as a psychological, humanistic moral and societal phenomenon. The violent criminal is seen as psychologically abnormal, while at the same time his activities provide the impetus for the popular media’s pursuit of simple labeling of our society.

The police are shown as psychologically stressed due to their experiences of the human suffering and cruelty inherent in violent crime, and the victims of crime are examined not only in the narrow terms of rescue or death – rather, the possibility that those “rescued” are so psychologically wounded that they may never be able to live a normal life is seriously considered. Kilpi’s book reveals how deeply traumatic violent crime is for everyone it touches.

Merete Mazzarella: Ingen saknad, ingen sorg (No regret, no sorrow,
Söderströms / Atlantis)

Merete Mazzarella’s novel is a nuanced and empathetic description of a day in the life of 79-year-old Zacharias Topelius, at the same time viewing Topelius as tied to his own time, giving the portrayal a delicate irony. On the one hand, the novel is a study of old age with all that it entails: memory, renunciation, loss, emotion, the reevaluation of perceptions, even doubts about one's past deeds and thoughts. On the other hand, the book is a study of the Finnish mentality of the 1800s through the contemplation one who would in future be a central cultural figure. In a Topelius family circle made up for the most part of women, women’s issues in various historical eras gain particular significance.

Tommi Melender: Ranskalainen ystävä (The French Friend, WSOY)

Tommi Melender’s novel is about friendship in a world where friendship is a diminishing resource. At the beginning of the novel, a well-known academic, identifying with Gustave Flaubert’s disgust with modern life, leaves his job and escapes to a small town in France, where he encounters certain darker aspects of contemporary European reality. The novel’s skillful composition combines a contemporary portrait of the European literary heritage with the bleak and pessimistic tones of a reluctance to believe in solidarity between people, or the possibility of friendship, or love itself.

See also: Finlandia candidates announced

Finlandia candidates announced

The shortlist of candidates for this years 30,000 euro Finlandia Literary Prize has been announced (apparently leaked by Uusi Suomi a day early), Hbl reports, noting that Finland-Swedish author Merete Mazzarella's Ingen saknad, ingen sorg – En dag i Zacharias Topelius liv is present on the list in its Finnish translation (published by Tammi). The other candidates are:

Turkka Hautala -  Salo (Gummerus)
Kari Hotakainen Ihmisen osa (Gummerus)
Antti Hyry Uuni (Otava)
Marko Kilpi Kadotetut (Gummerus)
Tommi Melender Ranskalainen ystävä (WSOY)

In their statement, the members of the jury remark that many of the novels submitted for consideration this year show signs of the influence of the methods and conventions of the detective novel - even those which have little connection with the thriller genre. This is a tendency that has been pointed to on this blog more than once.

The prizewinner will be announced on December 2.