Author: Anastasia

Last week, in the city of Leipzig, the winner of the EU Prize for Literature was announced. Along with it, 5 nominees received honorary mentions, and we are bursting with pride, since HLA’s Iida Rauma, with her novel Destruction, is among them!

Last year, a new format for the EUPL Prize was introduced: only one winner is now selected from all the nominees instead of each participating country having a winner. The initial book selection is conducted by national organisations, each entitled to submit one book that is of high literary quality with potential for translatability. A second round of selection is conducted by a seven-member European jury, who thus selects an overall Prize winner and five special mention awards. 

You can read about all the nominees here.

Destruction, Rauma’s third novel, asks how one can write about oneself if one’s own self has been shattered. The novel won the most prestigious literary award in Finland, Finlandia Prize, last autumn, and has so far sold over 30,000 copies in Finland. It was also recently awarded the Blogistania Finlandia Award, the literature prize awarded by the Finnish book bloggers, bookstagramers and booktubers.

Foreign rights of Destruction have been sold to Sweden (Rámus).

Congratulations to the author!

Great news has reached us from Sweden: on the 26th of April, author Karin Erlandsson was awarded the Radio Sweden Short Story Prize (Sveriges Radios Novellpris) for her story Box (Lådan).

The prize is a part of the traditional Literature Week, organised by the Sweden’s National Broadcaster. In addition to a short story, also a novel and a work of poetry are awarded during the event crowning the Literature Week.

In her category, Erlandsson was competing with 4 other authors.

Karin Erlandsson is a Swedish-writing author who lives on Åland Islands. She writes both for children and adults, and has been nominated four times for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Her newest work is a narrative nonfiction Blue Yarn. What I know About Knitting, already sold to three territories, including to Blanvalet in Germany.

Congratulations to the author!

Our Little Pike is nearing a round number of foreign rights deals, as Host in the Czech Republic becomes the 17th publisher to acquire the rights.

Host seems to be going big on the Finnish literature these days, as it has recently made a 4-book deal to publish the legendary author from Finland, Pirkko Saisio.

As we have recently reported, Fishing for the Little Pike, the phenomenal debut by Juhani Karila, has also been doing splendidly on the home front, with already 30,000 copies sold since its publication in 2019.

The English edition will be published jointly by Restless Books and Pushkin Press this spring / summer.

The title is now nominated for the prestigious translation award in Poland, and it was honoured with such nominations as Prix Michelin in France and Internationaler Literaturpreis in Germany. In Finland, the book was awarded the Jarkko Laine Literature Prize, the Kalevi Jäntti’s Literary Prize, as well as Tähtifantasia Prize.

Karila’s publisher in Finland is Siltala.

Don’t forget to tune in the hilarious Literature from Finland podcast episode MYTH, where Karila discussed myths from and about Finland.

Congratulations to the author!

2 more foreign rights deals were closed this week for our Finlandia Junior winner A Giraffe’s Heart Is Unbelievably Large, by Sofia & Amanda Chanfreaus: World French rights were sold in auction to Édtions Milan; Lithuanian rights were acquired by Alma littera.

The title has already travelled 12 territories; additionally, a Hebrew offer is now on the table. Just last week, we announced the sale of English & Dutch rights. The Chanfreaus’ publishers abroad can be found on the title’s webpage.

Both Éditions Milan and Alma littera are familiar with the best children’s literature from Finland, as both publishers also share another title from the HLA’s list, a Finlandia Junior winner Radio Popov, by Anja Portin.

Alma littera is the biggest publisher in Lithuania, with an extensive list of upmarket and commercial, as well as nonfiction literature for adults, and books for children and young adults.

Éditions Milan has been publishing books for children of various ages for 40 years now. In four decades, the publisher succeeded to build a creative list, which raises a sensible and independent reader.

A Giraffe’s Heart Is Unbelievably Large was the winner of the most prestigious literary award in Finland for children’s & young people’s literature, Finlandia Junior Prize, last year. The title is now also nominated for the Nordic Council Children’s and Young People’s Literature Prize. The title has already sold over 10,000 copies in Finland.

This illustrated novel for the middle grade readers is a tale of longing to be part of a family, to find one’s place in the world, and to be loved as one is. 

Whenever a ten-year-old Vega, who has always lived with her father, tries to ask about her mother, the only answer she gets is mysteries. Once a not-so-nice girlfriend starts dating her father, and Vega gets an unexpected pen pal, she decides to set out on an adventure to find out more about her mother. The book is a superb read for a child alone or for parents and children together.

In Finland, the Chanfreau sisters are also published by Schildts & Söderströms.

Congratulations to the authors!

Breaking news just days before the London Book Fair: the Czech publisher Host has just acquired The Helsinki Trilogy, by the legendary Finnish author Pirkko Saisio, as well as her newest novel Passion (2021).

An almost 1600-page acquisition is no small deed, and the Host’s publisher Nikola Kochová is excited about going big on Finnish literature:

“We are very happy to finally publish The Helsinki Trilogy by Pirkko Saisio, and also her newest novel Passion. These literary gems catch readers from the first words and tell great stories in such an extraordinary way.”

Host is the 6th foreign publisher to be won over by Saisio’s classic trilogy: last autumn, the American publisher Two Lines Press, who will be publishing the third part of the trilogy, The Red Book of Farewells (translated by Mia Spangenberg), also acquired the other two titles: The Lowest Common Multiple (1988) and The Backlight (2000).

Before that, the whole trilogy was pre-empted in the Netherlands by De Geus, in France by Robert Laffont, and in Germany by Klett-Cotta. In Hungary, the trilogy is published by Polar.

Saisio’s Autofictional trilogy is one of the masterpieces in Finnish literature. Each novel was nominated for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, the last one finally taking the prize. The latest nomination for Saisio, who has during her long career received numerous literary awards, came for her bestselling novel Passion – a color-saturated, Tarkovskian chronicle of Europe.

Check out our recent Author in Focus newsletter and learn more about Saisio’s work!