Suliko by Pirkko Saisio has been awarded the Runeberg Prize. This is the first Runeberg win for Saisio, who is celebrating 50 years of authorship this year.
Suliko by Pirkko Saisio has won the Runeberg Prize which, named after the Finnish national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, is considered the second largest literary prize in Finland. This marks the first Runeberg Prize win for Saisio, the grand dame of Finnish literature and international literary sensation, who is celebrating 50 years of authorship this year.
The jury have motivated their choice as follows:
“The winner of this year’s Runeberg Prize is a raw and poetic portrait of one of world history’s most notorious tyrants. Despite its historical context the novel also tells about us and the world we now live in. With her deft touch, focused and crystal-clear, the author captures both the boundless evil of the human soul and its vulnerability. A masterpiece.”
Suliko is a lyrical and intense novel where a disillusioned dictator reflects on his life on a cold New Year’s Eve. The only thing that seems to bring him comfort is Suliko, a song from his youth that has become a leitmotif throughout his entire life. The novel slips into flashbacks, describing how his idealism turned into something completely different, and the events flash him by until he can hardly recognize himself. Focusing on the dictator himself and on the lives of the people who stood close to him or stood in his path throughout his rule, Suliko is a raw, poetic portrayal of a dictator and a political era, but also a show of strength from a world-famous author.
The Runeberg Prize is one of the most important literary awards in Finland, second only to Finlandia. The prize, worth 10,000 euros, is given out in two categories: fiction and, since 2017, children’s books.
Pirkko Saisio (b.1949) is an author in a league of her own on the Finnish literary scene: with a production ranging from plays to novellas, to historical novels, and all the way to autofiction before the term was coined. Saisio has reached a stage in her career where she has established herself as a modern classic in a way that is unique in the Finnish literary scene: her early works are enjoying global success, and her more recent works continue to speak to several generations, making her production timeless. These are just some of the motivations for which she was recently awarded the Vartio Award for her authorship and life’s work.
Saisio’s Helsinki Trilogy is now a part of world literature: praised in the German-speaking world and received with wide critical acclaim in the French-speaking world and the Netherlands, among others, the trilogy also made Saisio the first contemporary Finnish author whose production will be included in the Penguin Modern Classics.
In Finland, her works are published by Siltala.
Previous Runeberg winners on our list include Marja Kyllönen’s The Undeparted, Marisha Rasi Koskinen’s REC, Karin Erlandsson’s Night Express, Eva Frantz’s Raspberry Hill, Marjo Niemi’s The Mother of All Losses, Karin Erlandsson’s The Pearl Fisher, and Malin Klingenberg’s The Fantastic Alfredo.
Warmest congratulations to the author and the publisher!