Wept Another is travelling to Sweden: Historiska Media, the Swedish publisher of Before the Birds, Mäki’s first novel, will be the Swedish home of this title as well.
Merja Mäki’s newest book has started its journey into the world: Wept Another is now travelling to Sweden, where it will be published by Historiska Media, the publisher of Mäki’s first novel, the Torch Bearer award-winning Before the Birds.
Wept Another follows Larja, a young woman from Eastern Karelia. It is 1942, and peace has momentarily descended on this bit of territory recently reclaimed from the Soviets by Finnish troops. Larja has been studying at a teacher training camp and upon her return to her home village she has to come to terms with the fact that nothing is as it was. Her grandmother Matja, the village’s most-respected professional lamenter, is deathly ill, and her little sister Pola carries a secret deep within her heart. Their mother and father, carted off to a gulag years ago, are still missing. As Larja cares for her ailing grandmother, she listens to the messages the trees are sending her on the northern winds and discovers that she too has the gift of wailing. However, it requires great courage to accompany the dead to the other side, and she has been focusing on a career as a teacher. After a Finnish man steps into her life, Larja finds herself again torn between two different worlds. Wept Another is the story of a young woman who has grown up between two cultures on the border of two countries. It is a tale of roots and the ties that bind us, but above all, of the choices that you must make in life.
Historiska Media is a Swedish publishing house based in Lund and specialised in books that deal with history from a variety of different angles. They have published the Swedish edition of Mäki’s Before the Birds, which was an immediate success.
Congratulations to the author and the publisher!