Ulla-Lena Lundberg: Light and Flame

Stirring events shape a grand novel by one of Finland’s foremost authors.

It’s August 1852, and the city of Vaasa on Finland’s west coast has burned to the ground. The Swedish-speaking maid Betty can no longer find work and, although she possesses neither money nor fluency in Finnish, sets out on foot to seek a livelihood in the capital.

Betty’s trek begins a three-generation trip through the stormy years of Finland’s transformation into a nation, as successive Russification, independence, and civil war throw society into turmoil.

The new nation is also an educational project. Betty’s daughter Olga becomes a teacher, and Olga’s husband Robert the headmaster of a uniquely Nordic phenomenon, the folk high school. Impassioned conversation by impassioned conversation, the worker’s rights’ movement and cultural and educational movements wage battle on behalf of an independent Finland.

Whereas men stagger and are trampled beneath their ideologies, women stay standing, work, tend to their families, doubt, hope, and love.

Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s previous novel Ice (2012) won Finland’s most prestigious literary prize Finlandia and sold over 100,000 copies.

“History as viewed from the kitchen, in those things considered trivial that are ultimately so critical. Ulla-Lena Lundberg does this better than anyone, and this is true of The Light and the Flame as well. (…) The pages exude a lifetime of reading and expansive knowledge, thanks to which Lundberg’s text is never empty.”
– Helsingin Sanomat newspaper

“Ulla-Lena Lundberg writes masterfully about the dissonance, uncertainty, and restlessness that women feel in their roles as mothers, daughters, and confidants when social norms and customs crack. (…)The Light and the Flame is a novel that captivates the reader from the first instant – it has an ease and passion but also a severity and power that make reading it an unmitigated pleasure.”
– National broadcasting company Svenska Yle

“Wide-ranging historical literature that features many of the author’s finest hallmarks.”
– Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper

Also available:
Ice (2012)

About the author:
Ulla-Lena Lundberg