Beasts of the Sea, the hot book of autumn 2023 now sold to 22 language territories, has won the Blogistania Award.
Every year Finnish literature bloggers, bookstagrammers and booktubers are invited to weigh in and choose the best book of the past year: this time their clear favourite has been Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen.
The Blogistania Award is a yearly award for four different categories: best domestic book, best foreign book in translation, best non-fiction book, and best children’s and YA book.
Beasts of the Sea brought home the Blogistania Finlandia Award, for the best domestic book, while for the other categories Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries, Tommi Kinnunen & Minna Rytisalo’s latest non-fiction and J. S. Meresmaa’s and Leena Paasio’s latest works were awarded the respective prizes.
Beasts of the Sea is the ground-breaking debut novel of author and researcher Iida Turpeinen and it weaves together science and world-class literature: its red thread is a now extinct beast of the sea, Steller’s sea cow, and we follow the lives of the people who, over the course of three centuries, were on its tracks to try and give back to humanity a piece of nature otherwise lost forever.
Beasts of the Sea, published in Finland by publishing house S&S, has written Finnish literary history on the international arena, as its rights were quickly sold to over dozen areas with aggressive pre-empts and in heated auctions. The rights have currently been sold to 22 territories.
The book quickly became a critics’ favourite as well: it was awarded the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for the best debut, and it was nominated for the Finlandia Award, the Adlibris Award, and the Torch-Bearer Prize.
Warmest congratulations to the author and the publishers!