Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea, the hot book of 2023, continues its sensational domestic and international success: 50.000 copies of the book have now been sold in Finland alone in just a year on the market.
Beasts of the Sea is a literary achievement and a breathtaking adventure through three centuries. Approaching natural diversity through individual destinies, it’s a story of grand human ambitions and the urge to resurrect what humankind in its ignorance has destroyed. Steller’s sea cow, a sirenian lost to extinction centuries ago, is revived on the pages and is the red thread that ties together the individual fates of a group of people throughout the centuries.
The novel is the winner of The Thank You for the Book Award, Finland’s booksellers’ prize, the best debut award, the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, and a nominee for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, as well as for the Torch-bearer Prize. Its international breakthrough has been acknowledged for example by the Bookseller and its foreign rights have been sold to 26 territories all over the world. The German edition, out with Fischer, is a current hit in Germany, and its French edition by Autrement has been welcomed with rave reviews on French media, including on the newspaper Liberation.
In Finland, Beasts of the Sea is published by Kustantamo S&S, part of Schildts & Söderströms.
Iida Turpeinen (b. 1987) is a Helsinki-based literary scholar currently writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature. As an author, she is intrigued by the literary potentials of scientific research and by the offbeat anecdotes and meanderings from the history of science.
Warmest congratulations to the author!