The accolades for Beasts of the Sea keep rolling in as Iida Turpeinen‘s world-class debut conquers the international literary scene: the French edition of Beasts of the Sea has been nominated for the Best Foreign Book of the Year.
The French edition of Beasts of the Sea, translated by Sébastien Cagnoli and published by Flammarion (Autrement) with the title A la recherche du vivant. The French edition has also been welcomed in pocket format, published by J’ai lu. 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 27 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 and it has already sold 50.000 copies in Finland alone.
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.