Month: December 2018

Henriikka Tavi’s novel Tellervo has been nominated for Runeberg Prize, often considered to be the second most important literary prize in Finland.

Tellervo  is a funny, cheeky and slightly awkward story about a woman called Tellervo. She has three university degrees – but she works in a kiosk. She has one friend, no partner, and her inner world is tumultuous – except that she is constantly feeling empty inside.

When Tellervo decides to follow the advice of a self-help love guide, things start to happen. The Runeberg Prize nominations board stated that “on the side of the mischievous smile the novel points out the excessive and sometimes even tragic demands that our culture seems to set for leading a happy life”.

Henriikka Tavi (b. 1978) is a poet who’s first poetry collection Eg. Esa  (2007) received the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize. It was followed by the collection Dictionary  (2010) and Hope  (2011), the latter of which won both the Kalevi Jäntti prize as well as the Dancing Bear Prize, awarded by Yleisradio. In 2012 Tavi published a poetry collection each month in the project by the poetry publisher Poesia, called 12 . Tellervo (2018) is her first novel. Read more about it here.

The Czech language rights of Selja Ahava’s novel Things that Fall from the Sky has been sold to Pavel Dobrovský – Beta in Prague. Czech is the 17th language area to which the rights of the title have been sold.

The English edition of the title, published by Oneworld Publications in the UK, will come out in April 2019.

Things that Fall from the Sky (2015) was awarded with European Union Prize for literature in 2016, and it was nominated for Finlandia Prize and the Torch-Bearer Prize in Finland.

Read more about the title here.

Things that Fall from the Sky is Selja Ahava’s second novel. Her first one, The Day the Whale Swam through London (2010) was a nominee for the Helsingin Sanomat Literary Prize and it won the Laura Hirvisaari Prize (the Booksellers Literary Prize). Ahava’s third novel, Before My Husband Disappears (2017) was one of the most talked-about books in Finland when it came out.

Selja Ahava is published in Finland by Gummerus.

The rights of Things that Fall from the Sky have been sold to the following areas:
Albania, IDK
Bulgaria, Colibri
Croatia, Vuković & Runjić
Czech, Pavel Dobrovský – Beta
Denmark, Jensen & Dalgaard
World English, Oneworld
Estonia, Post Factum (Eesti Meedia)
Germany, Mare Verlag
Hungary, Typotex
Latvia, Lauku Avize
Lithuania, Homo liber
Macedonia, Magor
Poland, Relacja
Serbia, Štrik
Slovenia, KUD Sodobnost International
Spanish, Editorial Bercimuel
Ukraine, V. Books XXi

 

Minna Rytisalo’s second novel Mrs. C rose straight to the top-ten bestselling list as it came out in September, first hitting #4 and then rising to #2 in October, the busiest month in Finnish publishing.

Mrs. C is a story of a strong and independent-minded woman who gets her way in an era when the place of a woman was merely attending to the household and the children (read more about the book here).

The novels themes got some extra attention at the Turku book fair in the beginning of October when the President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, ended up demonstrating Finnish equality: he was sitting on the stairs  of the over-crowded hall listening to the discussion on equality between Rytisalo and the President’s wife, poet Jenni Haukio, and a couple of other panelists. 

Minna Rytisalo’s debut novel Lempi (2016) has gotten a tremendous amount of attention in Finland, selling over 25,000 copies and receiving numerous awards (read more here). The most recent publication of the novel was that of Hanser in Germany, where the book has gotten supreme visibility in the bookstores.