Month: June 2021

More foreign rights sales news: Kari Hotakainen’s spectacular bestseller from 2002, Trench Road, has been sold to KUD Sodobnost in Slovenia.

At the time, the novel was awarded the most prestigious literary award in the country, Finlandia Prize, as well as the Nordic Council Literature Prize; the Slovenian acquisition makes it the 19th foreign territory for the book altogether. The novel has been praised for its “critical linguistic instinct” and for the ability to portray “the misery of modern life sympathetically and with inverted verbal humour, but also with melancholy”; all the clichés in “how great life is” are met with observation and with the revelation of how bad things really are.

The warmly humorous novel tells a story of one Matti Virtanen, whose life is changed by a single strike, after which his wife and daughter leave him.

Belonging to a generation of men who have proven their commitment to equality by doing their fair share of household, cooking and childcare tasks, losing the family breaks the spine of Matti’s existence. He feels he needs to gain his family back to gain back also his role in life.

To succeed, Matti starts fulfilling his wife’s dream of a house. His obsession drives him to excesses, and soon there is no turning back.

KUD Sodobnost is one of the best-known publishers in Slovenia, with the list of carefully selected, award-winning titles. It publishes fiction, poetry, as well as children’s and YA books. It also follows the Finnish market closely, picking the best authors for their list.

Congratulations to the author!

With the speedy growth of foreign rights sales, Helsinki Literary Agency is happy to enhance its operations with the help of exquisite partners worldwide.

The esteemed Piergiorgio Nicolazzini Literary Agency (PNLA) will now have exclusive rights to represent our titles in Italy. PNLA has worked with an impressive list of Italian publishers, representing foreign authors on the home front. We are very excited about this new cooperation, as it will without a doubt help HLA bring Finnish literature to even more Italian publishers! 

Additionally, our long-term partner Casanovas & Lynch Literary Agency will from now on have exclusive rights to represent our authors in the entire Portuguese world, including Brazil. Casanovas & Lynch has done extraordinary work in the recent years regarding drawing the attention of Spanish and Catalan language publishers to literature from Finland, so we are confident the new expansion will encourage even more translations.

We thank all our partners for their fantastic work and are excited to see what is waiting for us in the future!

See our website for contact information and full list of our exclusive co-agents.

The summer might have begun for some, but we at HLA are busy, busy, busy selling rights! We are thrilled to announce that we now have an offer from DENMARK for the beloved crime series by Eva Frantz featuring police detective Anna Glad. This lovely – and somewhat unlikely – detective has featured three books: The Blue Villa (2017); the Crime Novel of the Year winner The Eighth Maiden (2018); and the most recent one, Out of the Game (2020).

The series has been previously sold to Estonia (Rahva raamat) and Sweden (Sekwa), and has done incredibly well on the home front: with praising reviews and over 55,000 copies sold in Finland, Glad remains one of the favourite police investigators among the readers.

Frantz recently discussed the character and creating suspenseful plots on Literature from Finland podcast fabulous episode ATMOSPHERES, which can be found on any of the usual platforms.

The Danish publisher will be announced next week; in the meantime, the rights are still available in many other territories, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us (urte@helsinkiagency.fi) for the English materials: we have a great package for all three books.

Quite a few other explosive deals are now under negotiations, so keep following us for more information!

The Finlandia Prize winner of 2020, Radio Popov by Anja Portin, continues its spectacular journey around the world.

World Spanish and Catalan rights were acquired by Nórdica Libros, a beautiful publishing house based in Madrid, with an emphasis on literature from the Nordic countries. It is the publisher of Maria Parr, Knut Hamsun, Kjell Askildsen, Vigdis Hjorth and Edith Södergran, among others, and is proud of its strong list of children’s authors and illustrators. We thank for the deal our partners in the Spanish world, Casanovas & Lynch.

Meanwhile, Slovenian rights were acquired by Sodobnost, one of the best-known publishers in the area, with the list of carefully selected, award-winning titles. Sodobnost publishes fiction, poetry, as well as children’s and YA books. It also follows the Finnish market closely, picking the best authors for their list – Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen, Kaisa Haponen & Anne Vasko, Sinikka & Tiina Nopola, among others. The deal was made with the help of our partners Livia Stoia Literary Agency.

The new deals mean that Radio Popov has now been sold to 14 territories altogether, a solid number for any author to be proud of. Portin’s success is not surprising though, given that her moving and adventurous book speaks to audiences of all ages. Radio Popov has been largely seen as a future children’s classic, which will be placed on the same shelf as Roald Dahl’s and Astrid Lindgren’s immortal books. Rest assured, more deals will follow soon, so don’t forget to keep up with the news!

Congratulations to the author and all her publishers!

Some exciting, exciting news has reached us from Russia: Eksmo has acquired the rights to publish Eva Frantz’s spooky ghost novel for the middle-grade readers, Raspberry Hill!

Eksmo is one of the largest publishing houses in Russia, whose publications take up almost the third of the entire market. It has become especially successful in science fiction and fantasy, as well as crime. Its authors is a beautiful collection of international prize winners (Pulitzer, Booker Prize and others), the most established Russian writers, as well as renowned authors of children’s literature.

Raspberry Hill (2018) was Frantz’s debut in children’s literature, which immediately gained success in Finland and a loyal fandom of young readers. Frantz gave a moving account on it in our Literature from Finland podcast episode ATMOSPHERES.

The book was awarded the prestigious Runeberg Junior Prize in 2019 and encouraged a thematic sequel Queen of the Night, published in 2021. Raspberry Hill has been sold to 3 foreign territories so far (including World English), and Queen of the Night has been sold to Denmark and optioned in Great Britain for World English rights. The Russian deal was made with the help of our partners Livia Stoia Literary Agency.

Raspberry Hill tells a story about young Stina, who ends up in a castle-like sanatorium called Raspberry Hill. There, she befriends Ruben, who starts taking her on nightly adventures around the forbidden parts of the building. Little by little, Stina realises something is not quite right around there. The new stand-alone Queen of the Night continues in the genre of ghosts, old, spooky buildings and secrets of the past. In it, a boy called Viktor is wandering around the haunted opera house, trying to figure out whose uneasy spirit is seeking revenge for the wrongdoings of the past centuries.

The English translation of Raspberry Hill will be published soon by Pushkin Press.