Author: Urpu Strellman

Two of the four owners of Helsinki Literary Agency merge as Siltala Publishing acquires Teos Publishing.

In the merger, Teos sells its publishing business to Siltala. Heikki Herlin, the majority owner of Teos, invests in Siltala, thus becoming one of the main owners of Siltala Publishing alongside its founders Touko Siltala and Aleksi Siltala.

The merger creates an independent, culturally and literarily ambitious alliance of two quality publishers, combining strong publishing expertise with a stable ownership base.

“Siltala and Teos both understand the book industry’s past and present. Together we will be able to influence its future. The joint publishing house will be able to address the needs of both readers and authors in the rapidly changing industry,” says Heikki Herlin, new partner of Siltala.

“In the alliance between Teos and Siltala, editorial ambition will be combined with a vision of the importance of literature and an understanding of the conditions of writers’ work. Heikki Herlin’s strong commitment and cultural determination will open up inspiring new perspectives in the joint development of the two publishing houses,” says publisher Touko Siltala.

Teos will remain an imprint of Siltala Publishing, and the merger will not affect the work of their authors.

Arto Forsten will continue as CEO of Siltala. Heikki Herlin, Jaakko Tapaninen and Nina Paavolainen, former CEO of Teos, will join Siltala as new members of the board.

Siltala Publishing was founded in 2008 by brothers Touko and Aleksi Siltala. Siltala is the publisher of Finlandia Prize-winning authors such as Kari Hotakainen, Pirkko Saisio and Iida Rauma. Siltala is also the Finnish publisher of, for example, David Foster Wallace, César Aira, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Jonathan Franzen and George Saunders.

Teos Publishing was founded in 2003 by a team of publishing professionals, including the late Silja Hiidenheimo and Niklas Herlin. Its authors include Finlandia Prize-winning authors Juha Hurme, Riikka Pelo, Mikko Rimminen and Leena Krohn. Teos is the Finnish publisher of, for example, Hilary Mantel, Thomas Bernhard, László Krasznahorkai, Jorge Luis Borges and Clarice Lispector.

Helsinki Literary Agency was established in 2017 as a joint venture of publishing houses Gummerus, Schildts & Söderströms and Teos. Siltala became a shareholder in the agency in 2019.

Saisio will be the first living Finnish author on the world-famous Penguin Modern Classics list. The Penguin pre-empt is the fourth for the trilogy, previously pre-empted in the Netherlands by De Geus, in Germany by Klett-Cotta and in France by Robert Laffont.

Pirkko Saisio, one of the most prominent figures in Finnish literary world but also in theatre and on screen, is quickly becoming also an international phenomenon. In addition to the Dutch, German, French and now the UK and Commonwealth pre-empts, the Helsinki Trilogy has been sold recently also to Czech Republik (Host), Hungary (Polar), and Romania (Pandora M). In the USA and Canada, it is published by Two Lines Press.

Consisting of three Finlandia Prize nominees and one Finlandia Prize winner, the autofictional trilogy has been a classic in Finland since the novels came out: The Lowest Common Multiple in 1998, The Backlight in 2000 and The Red Book of Farewells in 2003.

The trilogy was pre-empted by Casiana Ionita, the publishing director at Penguin Press, and the deal was negotiated by Elianna Kan from Regal Hoffmann & Associates.

First living Finnish author on the Penguin Modern Classics list, Pirkko Saisio will join authors such as Gertrude Stein, Simoine de Beauvoir, Daphne du Maurier, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Fernando Pessoa, Italo Calvino, Saul Bellow, Federico García Lorca, Stanislaw Lem, Franz Kafka, Tennessee Williams, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, George Orwell, Karel Capek and many others.

Penguin Modern Classics was established in 1961, 15 years after the Penguin Classics list. There are two previous Finnish titles on these classics lists: the Finnish national epic Kalevala on the Classics list and Väinö Linna’s Unknown Soldier (original published in 1954) on the Modern Classics list.

Interviewed in The Critic in 2020 by Alexander Larman, the creative editor of the Penguin Classics, Henry Eliot, said that “The Modern Classics series gathers the greatest books of more recent times, books that have challenged convention, changed the world or created something new. They are books that speak powerfully to the moment — and time will tell if they speak for more than that.”

Saisio’s latest novel is Passion (2021) – a color-saturated, Tarkovskian chronicle of Europe. The novel got Saisio her 7th nomination for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, and with the sales of around 30,000 copies so far, it occupied the bestseller list for a good while. Passion will come out in Estonia in May 2024, published by Varrak, and soon also in the Czech Republic, published by Host.

The best Finnish debut of 2023 – that is, the winner of Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize – Beasts of the Sea, has reached 20 language areas with its most recents sales to the Czech Paseka, Lithuanian Alma Littera and Albanian Muza, and an offer on the table for the Arabic rights.

The latest publishers for Iida Turpeinen’s debut Beasts of the Sea are well-known publishers from Czech Republic, Lithuania and Albania.

In Czech, the beast of the sea has swam to Paseka, the publisher of authors such as Alice Munro, Douglas Stuart, Vladimir Nabokov, Édouard Louis, and Lyudmila Ulitskaya. Paseka, known for its quality translations and emphasis on the graphic design and typesetting of its titles, has published from Finland before quite a few authors, including Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen – a co-nominee for Finlandia Prize with Iida Turpeinen – and Antti Leikas.

In Lithuania, the country’s biggest publishing house Alma Littera will be taking care of Beasts of the Sea. Their publishing house includes a high number of literary names, including Nobel Prize winners Abdulrazak Gurnah, Peter Handke, and Louise Glück. From Finland, Alma Littera has published, among others, novels by Minna Rytisalo and Tommi Kinnunen.

Albanian Muza is a publishing house founded in 2019, with already an interesting list of both fiction, children’s titles and nonfiction. From Finland, Muza has already published a good number of titles, including Mia Kankimäki.

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 a dozen areas with aggressive pre-empts and in heated auctions. The international publishers at the moment are (with an Arabic offer on the table):

Albania, Muza
Catalan, Cossetània
Czech Republic, Paseka
Denmark, People’s (pre-empted)
Dutch, Singel (pre-empted)
English, MacLehose (UK) and Little, Brown (US) (pre-empted)
Estonia, Tänapäev
World French, Autrement (auction)
German, Fischer (pre-empted)
Greece, Ikaros 
Hungary, Polar
Italy, Neri Pozza (pre-empted)
Lithuania, Alma Littera 
Norway, Gyldendal (pre-empted)
Poland, Poznanskie (pre-empted)
Portuguese (in Portugal), Porto Editora
Slovenia, Mladinska
Spanish, Seix Barral (pre-empted)
Sweden, Albert Bonnier (pre-empted)

In addition to this remarkable success abroad, the novel has already gained three nominations for literary awards, and just a bit over a week ago it took one of them and won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, given to the best debut of the year.

The novel also is a nominee for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, as well as for the Torch-bearer Prize, given to the most internationally potential Finnish novel.

The novel is a science-fueled story of extinctions with a huge marine mammal, Steller’s sea cow, as its protagonist. With her short, concise sentence and the skills of a great storyteller, Turpeinen has created a page-turning literary work is that is hugely topical despite the fact that the events of the novel take place in 18th, 19th and 20th century.

Iida Turpeinen (b. 1987) is a Helsinki-based literary scholar currently writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature.

The internationally most successful Finnish language debut ever, Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea, has reached 18 areas with its sales to the Polish Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. The novel is also a nominee for three major literary awards in Finland.

The latest publisher for Iida Turpeinen’s debut Beasts of the Sea is Polish Poznanskie, publisher of authors such as Toni Morrison, Anthony Doerr, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Douglas Stuart, and Bernardine Evaristo.

Rights Manager Paulina Surniak from Poznańskie said:

“I believe that the huge international interest in Beasts of the Sea is well justified. It’s a gorgeously written, poetic, raw and provocative book that tackles an important subject. How are we connected to other species? How can we live with the understanding that human beings have done so much harm? It has the charm of a traditional narrative, full of adventures, explorers and a sense of wonder, and it combines it with timely questions. I’m thrilled that we’ll be able to include it into our list.”

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 a dozen areas with aggressive pre-empts and in heated auctions. Currently, the rights have been sold to 15 areas, with offers on the table for 3 more (Arabic, Catalan and Czech). The international publishers are:

World English, MacLehose and Little, Brown (pre-empted)
German, Fischer (pre-empted)
World French, Autrement (auction)
World Spanish, Seix Barral (pre-empted)
Italy, Neri Pozza (pre-empted)
Dutch, Singel (pre-empted)
Sweden, Albert Bonnier (pre-empted)
Norway, Gyldendal (pre-empted)
Denmark, People’s (pre-empted)
Poland, Poznanskie (pre-empted)
Estonia, Tänapäev
Greece, Ikaros 
Hungary, Polar
Portugal, Porto Editora
Slovenia, Mladinska.

In addition to this remarkable success abroad, the novel has already gained three nominations for literary awards. It is a nominee for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, as well as for the Torch-bearer Prize, given to the most internationally potential Finnish novel. It is also a nominee for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, given to the best debut of the year.

The novel is a science-fueled story of extinctions with a huge marine mammal, Steller’s sea cow, as its protagonist. With her short, concise sentence and the skills of a great storyteller, Turpeinen has created a page-turning literary work is that is hugely topical despite the fact that the events of the novel take place in 18th, 19th and 20th century.

Iida Turpeinen (b. 1987) is a Helsinki-based literary scholar currently writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature.

The internationally most successful Finnish debut ever, Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea, has been nominated for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, after nominations for the Torch-bearer Prize and the best debut prize.

After an immense international success and sales soon closed to 16 language areas, Iida Turpeinen’s debut Beasts of the Sea has started collecting also recognition on the Finnish soil. After nominations for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize as the best debut of the year and the nomination for the Torch-bearer Prize, the novel is now also a candidate for the Finlandia Prize, the biggest and most prestigious literary award in Finland.

The Finlandia Prize jury stated:
“Man’s relationship to nature and other animal species and the exploitation of animals as raw material for human society is a core theme in contemporary ethical-philosophical debates. Beasts of the Sea takes a riveting approach to this theme, melding the history of science with fine-grained portrayals of characters from various periods. Beasts of the Sea brings an unfamiliar creature to such vivid life that, as a reader, one is compelled to visit the museum and breathe the same air as its skeleton.”

Beasts of the Sea has written Finnish literary history already now on the international arena, as its rights have been quickly sold to a dozen areas with aggressive pre-empts and in heated auctions. Currently, the rights have been sold to 14 areas, with offers on the table for two more (Catalan and Czech). The international publishers are:

World English, MacLehose and Little, Brown (pre-empted)
German, Fischer (pre-empted)
World French, Autrement (auction)
World Spanish, Seix Barral (pre-empted)
Italy, Neri Pozza (pre-empted)
Dutch, Singel (pre-empted)
Sweden, Albert Bonnier (pre-empted)
Norway, Gyldendal (pre-empted)
Denmark, People’s (pre-empted)
Estonia, Tänapäev
Greece, Ikaros 
Hungary, Polar
Portugal, Porto Editora
Slovenia, Mladinska.

The novel is a science-fueled story of extinctions with a huge marine mammal, Steller’s sea cow, as its protagonist. With her short, concise sentence and the skills of a great storyteller, Turpeinen has created a page-turning literary work is that is hugely topical despite the fact that the events of the novel take place in 18th, 19th and 20th century.

Iida Turpeinen (b. 1987) is a Helsinki-based literary scholar currently writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature.

Finlandia Prize is Finland’s biggest literary award, given out in three categories: fiction, children’s and young adult literature, and nonfiction. Each award is worth 30,000 euros. The winners will be announced on 30th November.