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Most exciting news has reached us from France: French rights of the prestigious Runeberg Prize winner, Marisha Rasi-Koskinen‘s masterpiece REC, have been sold to Payot & Rivages. This is the second foreign rights sale for this novel: Danish rights were acquired by Jensen & Dalgaard earlier this year.

Myriam Anderson, the editor at the French publishing house, has stated they are confident that REC “is a piece of literature like no other” and that, despite the challenge posed by the scope of the novel, they “won’t be coming across such a sophisticated and ambitious, yet readable and thrilling book anytime soon again”. The French deal was made with the help of our wonderful partner Anna Linblom at the Nordik Literary Agency.

Éditions Payot & Rivages stands out among the French publishers with an exquisite list of both contemporary and classical authors from France and abroad. It is the publisher of Bernard Quiriny, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Stefan Zweig, Virginia Woolf, Charles M. Schulz, to mention a few. Payot & Rivages also published Antti Rönkä’s debut novel Off the Ground which garnered splendid reviews in the French media.

REC is an atmospheric, post-modern dive into the fragmented reality we are living today. When teenager Lucas meets a peculiar boy named Cole, it is a start of a decades-long on-and-off friendship, where real and fictional characters are present simultaneously, where images and stories begin many times, in various places, and where dark, possessive and manipulating side of humans take over with irrevocable outcomes – unless… nothing is true. As the author herself describes the book, “it is a love letter to fiction”, where the reality is not unambiguous and the understanding of it is rather formed in people’s minds, stories and images.

In addition to the Runeberg Prize, the novel was also awarded the Tampere City Literature Prize and the Torch-Bearer Prize. The internationally acclaimed Finnish author Kjell Westö stated about the novel:

“REC masterfully plays with various levels of time and place, the storytelling, as well as concepts of photography and filming. The book is extraordinary in its abundance of internal stories that form the whole. The centre of it is a friendship that starts at a young age and involves many mysteries, addictions and traumas.“

Rasi-Koskinen is scheduled to appear on our Literature from Finland podcast in autumn; in the meantime, we encourage you to have a look at the short interview with the author, which will give you an even better understanding why this novel is not like anything you have read before.

Congratulations to the author!

Splendid books never fail to draw immediate attention from foreign publishers. The beautiful nonfiction for children, Secret Gardeners, written by Lina Laurent and illustrated by Maija Hurme, was published in Finland only some weeks ago, and we already made some fantastic foreign rights deals.

World English rights were acquired by Pajama Press, a well-known and established publisher based in Toronto, Canada. Their books are largely distributed in the entire continent of North America, as well as other English language markets. Pajama Press is a dedicated publisher of children’s and YA books, and extremely successful in the school and public library markets. The publisher’s titles regularly win awards, and it has a growing track record of titles shortlisted to regional reader’s choice awards.

In Estonia, the title will be published by the wonderful Ühinenud ajakirjad, that continues to introduce quality Finnish literature to Estonian readers. The publisher has previously acquired both Finlandia Prize winners of 2020, Anni Kytömäki’s novel Margarita and Anja Portin’s children’s novel Radio Popov.

Last but not least, Czech rights were acquired by Host, one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the country. Host is especially proud of its lists of contemporary Czech fiction, as well as translated literary fiction and crime. The publisher has introduced Czech readers to such international grands as Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Jeffrey Eugenides, Olga Tokarczuk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and others. Its strong children’s list includes such beloved authors as Timo Parvela, Maija Lunde and J. D. Rinehart. Host has also recently acquired the rights of children’s novel The Night Express by Karin Erlandsson & Peter Bergting.

Congratulations to the authors, we are sure many more deals will follow soon!

More foreign rights sales news: Kari Hotakainen’s spectacular bestseller from 2002, Trench Road, has been sold to KUD Sodobnost in Slovenia.

At the time, the novel was awarded the most prestigious literary award in the country, Finlandia Prize, as well as the Nordic Council Literature Prize; the Slovenian acquisition makes it the 19th foreign territory for the book altogether. The novel has been praised for its “critical linguistic instinct” and for the ability to portray “the misery of modern life sympathetically and with inverted verbal humour, but also with melancholy”; all the clichés in “how great life is” are met with observation and with the revelation of how bad things really are.

The warmly humorous novel tells a story of one Matti Virtanen, whose life is changed by a single strike, after which his wife and daughter leave him.

Belonging to a generation of men who have proven their commitment to equality by doing their fair share of household, cooking and childcare tasks, losing the family breaks the spine of Matti’s existence. He feels he needs to gain his family back to gain back also his role in life.

To succeed, Matti starts fulfilling his wife’s dream of a house. His obsession drives him to excesses, and soon there is no turning back.

KUD Sodobnost is one of the best-known publishers in Slovenia, with the list of carefully selected, award-winning titles. It publishes fiction, poetry, as well as children’s and YA books. It also follows the Finnish market closely, picking the best authors for their list.

Congratulations to the author!

With the speedy growth of foreign rights sales, Helsinki Literary Agency is happy to enhance its operations with the help of exquisite partners worldwide.

The esteemed Piergiorgio Nicolazzini Literary Agency (PNLA) will now have exclusive rights to represent our titles in Italy. PNLA has worked with an impressive list of Italian publishers, representing foreign authors on the home front. We are very excited about this new cooperation, as it will without a doubt help HLA bring Finnish literature to even more Italian publishers! 

Additionally, our long-term partner Casanovas & Lynch Literary Agency will from now on have exclusive rights to represent our authors in the entire Portuguese world, including Brazil. Casanovas & Lynch has done extraordinary work in the recent years regarding drawing the attention of Spanish and Catalan language publishers to literature from Finland, so we are confident the new expansion will encourage even more translations.

We thank all our partners for their fantastic work and are excited to see what is waiting for us in the future!

See our website for contact information and full list of our exclusive co-agents.

The summer might have begun for some, but we at HLA are busy, busy, busy selling rights! We are thrilled to announce that we now have an offer from DENMARK for the beloved crime series by Eva Frantz featuring police detective Anna Glad. This lovely – and somewhat unlikely – detective has featured three books: The Blue Villa (2017); the Crime Novel of the Year winner The Eighth Maiden (2018); and the most recent one, Out of the Game (2020).

The series has been previously sold to Estonia (Rahva raamat) and Sweden (Sekwa), and has done incredibly well on the home front: with praising reviews and over 55,000 copies sold in Finland, Glad remains one of the favourite police investigators among the readers.

Frantz recently discussed the character and creating suspenseful plots on Literature from Finland podcast fabulous episode ATMOSPHERES, which can be found on any of the usual platforms.

The Danish publisher will be announced next week; in the meantime, the rights are still available in many other territories, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us (urte@helsinkiagency.fi) for the English materials: we have a great package for all three books.

Quite a few other explosive deals are now under negotiations, so keep following us for more information!