Beasts of the Sea is travelling to Iceland, where it will be published by Benedikt.
Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea continues its global triumph: Benedikt has acquired the rights in Iceland, marking 28 foreign territories for this wildly successful title.
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 Book Beat Newcomer Award, The Thank You for the Book Award, Finland’s booksellers’ prize, the best debut award, the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, the Storytel award, 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.
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.
Benedikt is an Icelandic publishing house with a broad and high-quality selection of domestic and translated works. They are the publisher of Jón Kalman Stefánsson and Au∂ur Ava Olafsdóttir, and the Icelandic home of Tove Ditlevsen, Sally Rooney, and Elena Ferrante, among others.
Congratulations to the author and the publishers!