The World English edition by Hurst of Mannerheim, Marshal of Finland: A Life In Geopolitics, has only just hit the bookstore shelves, but it is already making waves.
Oliver Moody on The Times does not hold back in sketching the portrait of Gustaf Mannerheim, stating that in today’s “post-heroic age Mannerheim seems like a figure of almost unimaginably Homeric proportions”.
In Meinander‘s work the reader learns that Gustaf Mannerheim has, in fact, become an unlikely saviour of the Finnish nation after a string of deeds that are almost hard to believe, making him, in Moody’s words, a “bridge between the worlds of Kipling and Le Carré”.
It is evidently agreed that Meinander‘s work is worth keeping a close eye on, since it is in the same article praised as a “biography [that] oozes good sense and generosity to its predecessors and deserves to become the new standard popular book on its subject”.
Tony Barber on The Financial Times compares his role in Finnish history to that of figures like Winston Churchill in British history and Charles De Gaulle in France, but also to Camillo Cavour in Italy: an unlikely and controversial, yet decisive figure in the making of a nation. A special praise is reserved for Meinander’s ability to highlight the controversy and the flaws of Mannerheim’s character without taking away from his contribution to the history of the nation.
Warm congratulations to the author, and don’t miss out on this title!