Wonderful news continue! Susanna Hast’s novel Body of Evidence was awarded the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize given for the best debut book of the year. The award sum is 15,000 euros.
According to the head of the jury, Antti Majanader, “with her work, Hast brought autotheoretical literature to Finland”: nothing is invented, and the author is determined to find the truth.
Body of Evidence (2022)
In Body of Evidence, all starts from the 1990s, in a small village up north. There is a terraced house, a block of flats, a bedroom, a bathroom, a living room. A crime has been committed, but no one has called the police, no evidence is gathered, suspects are not questioned.
Years later, a woman starts following traces on the fringes of her memory, so as to find the missing archival truth of what happened to her. She needs to write out the truth in order to regain her humanity.
“The novel is an infuriating and moving masterpiece.” – Eeva magazine
“You could describe Susanna Hast’s debut as […] startling, devastating and revolutionary.” – Turun Sanomat newspaper
Susanna Hast (photo: Miikka Pirinen)
Susanna Hast (b. 1980) has a doctorate in Social Sciences. She works as a researcher and Associate Professor at Uniarts Helsinki. She has researched war, compassion and corporality. Her intimately personal debut novel Body of Evidence (2022) touches on the mechanisms of violence and trauma, and in conjunction, the silent war against women, one that leaves no trace in the history books.
A Giraffes’s Heart is Unbelievably Large, is a tale of longing to be part of a family, to find one’s place in the world, and to be loved as one is. Whenever a ten-year-old Vega, who has always lived with her father, tries to ask about her mother, the only answer she gets is mysteries. Once a not-so-nice girlfriend starts dating her father, and Vega gets an unexpected pen pal, she decides to set out on an adventure to find out more about her mother. The book is a superb read for a child alone or for parents and children together.
The Runeberg Junior Prize is given yearly in two categories – adult fiction and children’s literature – and is often considered to be the most important literary award after Finlandia.
The winners are traditionally announced on February 5th, the National Runeberg’s Day.
Finally, the day crowning the most exciting week in the Finnish literary world has arrived: the nominees for the most prestigious literary award in the country, Finlandia Prize for Fiction, have been announced!
Iida Rauma’sthird novel Destruction came out in January 2022, instantly gaining an impressive amount of praising reviews – resulting to the first-print run selling out in a week. Swedish rights were recently sold to Rámus Förlag.
One of the strongest literary titles of the year in Finland, Destruction has brought the question about violence towards children and the societal structures supporting it a visible topic in public discussion. “No other type of violence is talked about in the same way as acts and attitudes towards children in school. Such deeds are allowed in the school environment that in the adults’ world would be subject to criminal law,” has Iida Rauma said in one of her interviews.
“Destruction is a novel about school violence, discrimination and injustice. Describing the merciless consequences of school bullying, the novel becomes an extraordinary stand regarding the dynamics of discrimination of all kinds which, in Rauma’s book manifests itself as the protagonist’s complete emotional breakdown. Destruction is a fierce reading experience: the intense narration doesn’t give the reader even a minute’s break. ” – Finlandia Prize Jury
Iida Rauma (photo: Marek Sabogal)
Iida Rauma’s (b. 1984) debut novel The Book of Disappearanceswas published in 2011 and nominated for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize. Her 2015 novel On Sex and Mathematics was nominated for the European Union Prize for Literature and won both the Kalevi Jäntti Prize and the Torch-Bearer Prize. Rauma has a master’s degree in political science with a specialization in political history.
The Undeparted (2022)
TheUndeparted, the new novel by Marja Kyllönen, glows with black luminosity. In the hardscrabble north of the 1950s, Rauno loses his heart to the girl from the neighboring farm, Laimi Inari. The young couple’s forbidden love is sweet, but the happiness they anticipate never manifests. They remain childless, and year by year the flame fades.
The novel is a story of childlessness and dreams that fade or morph into nightmares. Page by page, it swells with inevitable force into a horror story that firmly holds the reader in its agonizing grip.
“At the heart of Kyllönen’s novel is a masterful and potent idiom that knits itself into the work’s dreamlike world. The Undeparted is a plunge into cross-generational guilt, envy, and silence that erupt to the surface through the desperate individual acts. A novel of extraordinary expressive force, it seduces and dupes the reader until the end. While sowing fear, it still offers the possibility of hope.” – Finlandia Prize Jury
Marja Kyllönen (photo: Annina Mannila)
Aside from The Undeparted, Marja Kyllönen (b. 1975) has published two more novels: Leaded Loins (1997), which won the Helsingin Sanomat Literary Prize for best debut of the year, and Violations (2001). Her radio play Silent Partner (2010) was selected as Finland’s nominee for the Prix Italia.
A Nice, Civilized Individual (2022)
What is there to do when after your dear Grandpa’s death you’ve got to empty his house, choose an urn and organise a funeral? And what if, meanwhile, your long-term relationship is heading for a crisis and your so-called professional life also wants its fair share?
In A Nice, Civilised Individual byEeva Turunen, the narrator – an architect like their Grandpa, but of a different gender and from a different age – is inundated with gentlemen’s clubs, cloth for suits, rolls of sketch paper, stencils, receipts for baked goods, and miles upon miles of ciné film. One foot in the queer margin, the narrator keeps opposing Grandpa’s conservatism, but can’t help admitting that some of the values are coursing down the generations – and that full marks are point blank unattainable, no matter how hard you try.
“Turunen’s novel is navigating between empathy and frustration at the moment of reckoning between different generations. She has built a unity out of faultlessly apt observation, that combines humour with the everyday and, at times, a melancholy tone. Her novel – written in free verse and dialogue – guides the readers to the nuance in language, the shades and feel of which Turunen makes use of in a delicious way.” – Finlandia Prize jury
Eeva Turunen (photo: Laura Malmivaara)
Eeva Turunen (b. 1983) is an architect and playwright. Her first novel, Ms U Reminisces about Her So-Called Relationship History (2018), was praised for its gentle, neurotic humour. It received Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize as the best debut of the year, and it was and shortlisted for the Runeberg Prize in 2019.
Finlandia Prize is the most prestigious literary award in Finland, given out yearly in three categories: fiction, nonfiction, and children’s & YA literature. The award sum is 30,000 euros.
In the novel, Strömberg captures the life of ninth-graders in that recognizable phase in life when you have a real drive to be independent and to discover and define your identity, and when friendships have a huge impact on your decisions and desires. Strömberg has a knack for portraying the emotional landscape and world view of young people in a convincing way and she masterfully depicts the anxieties and emotional turmoil teenagers face daily.
“A credible youth novel about friendship, growing up and a great hunger for life. The author describes with precision and joy the life of teenagers in a nameless small town, the boundaries of which the main characters want to cross. The book shows what it feels like to want very much, even though you are not entirely sure what it is you want.” – Finlandia Junior Prize Jury
“With sensitivity and accuracy [Strömberg] describes the turning point of adolescence, when the fantasies about who you want to be are suddenly put into practice, friendships are put to test and first love feels both alluring and terrifying. With the greatest respect for both her readers and her characters, Ellen Strömberg gives new life to the most iconic motif in youth literature.” – August Prizejury
A Giraffe’s Heart is Unbelievably Large (2022)
Sofia Chanfreau’s & Amanda Chanfreau’s novel for children, A Giraffes’s Heart is Unbelievably Large, is a tale of longing to be part of a family, to find one’s place in the world, and to be loved as one is. Whenever a ten-year-old Vega, who has always lived with her father, tries to ask about her mother, the only answer she gets is mysteries. Once a not-so-nice girlfriend starts dating her father, and Vega gets an unexpected pen pal, she decides to set out on an adventure to find out more about her mother. The book is a superb read for a child alone or for parents and children together.
“In its magical realism, the work takes us to places and moods that shimmer with something rare and fine. We see the world through the eyes of the narrator and the main characters, and captivating connections form between fantasy and reality. The narration is borne along by beautiful language, surprising transitions, and humor. Equally generous and idiosyncratic are the book’s illustrations, which carry us off to milieus we are in no hurry to leave.” – Finlandia Junior Prize jury
Penelope and the Perilous Porridge (2022)
Penelope and the Perilous Porridge, written by Saara Kekäläinen and illustrated by Reetta Niemensivu, tells a story about a lovable knee-high girl full of attitude and mischief. When she one morning orders a treat of a break-fast garnished with caramel and sprinkles, her Dad puts in front of her the house special. A plate of porridge.
This is the beginning of an epic duel between Penelope and the porridge. Penelope sees in everyday events sprawling adventures that entrance the reader with their clever twists of the plot. What if the porridge isn’t porridge at all? What if the porridge is actually a black hole from outer space which is just waiting to swallow Penelope up and hurl her to the other side of the solar system? Or if the porridge is just a cub and its big, dangerous mum is somewhere nearby?
Which will win in the end, Penelope or the porridge?
“An ordinary bowl of breakfast porridge takes on increasingly astounding meanings in a picture book where the drama builds splendidly from spread to another. The dialogue between image and word easily traverses pages on which the element that seems visually and narratively impossible – porridge – changes, in the eye of the protagonist, to different forms: into an ambassador, a part of an art exhibition or an archaeological treasure. Can porridge ever have been pictured with such subtlety?” – Finlandia Junior Prize jury
Finlandia Prize is the most prestigious literary award in Finland, given out yearly in three categories: fiction, nonfiction, and children’s & YA literature. The award sum is 30,000 euros.
The nominees for the nonfiction category were announced yesterday, and HLA is proud to have a title running. Fiction nominees will be announced on Thursday, the 10th of November. The winners will be announced on November 30th.
Congratulations to all the authors for the nomination!
The most exciting time of the year has arrived: this week, we will find out all the nominees for the most prestigious literary award in Finland, Finlandia Prize.
First in line is nonfiction category, and we are thrilled to announce that Annika Luther’s book Rye – A Prolific History is competing with 5 other titles for the award!
Rye – A Prolific History (2022)
Rye – A Prolific History takes the reader on a captivating, compelling journey through the millennia as it recounts the story of the grain. Crop failures and famine, the devastation caused by ergot, and innovations such as the heated barn play a role in a rich cultural history sprouting around rye, from the adoption of the “rye flower” as a symbol of conservative politics to an unusual cast of characters, such as Nikolai Vavilov, the botanist who tracked down the plant’s origins.
The book also addresses rye’s current status a big player in the sourdough starter boom and its future in gene banks and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to preserve diversity in plant life.
Aftonbladet Newspaper stated about the book:
“There are similarities between the new popular science book Rye – A Prolific History, by the Finland Swedish novelist and biologist Annika Luther, and Patrik Svensson’s megasuccess The Book of Eels from 2019. Both authors write about cultural history, focusing on non-human subjects. Both write with curiosity and, at times, a hint of poetry, that leads the reader to unexpected places and insights about ecological relations.”
Annika Luther (photo: Helen Korpak)
Annika Luther (b. 1958) is a biologist, award-winning author, and high school teacher. In addition to Rye: A Prolific History (2022), she has published three novels and six books for young adults, of which Letter to the Ends of the Earth (2008) was nominated for the Finlandia Junior Award and won both the Topelius Award and the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland Award.
Finlandia Prize is the most prestigious literary award in Finland, given out yearly in three categories: fiction, nonfiction, and children’s & YA literature. The award sum is 30,000 euros.
The nominees for the children’s category will be announced tomorrow and the fiction nominees on Thursday – the 9th and 10th of November respectively. The winners will be announced on November 30th.
