And at the same time somewhere else or at a different time in the same place or – well.
Author: Mikko Rimminen
Finnish original: Maailman luonnollisin asia
Publisher: Teos, 2017
Number of pages: 394 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample
Ernst lives in Berlin and goes to work every day, does things every day, and ‘is’ every day. What he actually does is a bit unclear, but one stormy morning as he shuffles to work, things start to snowball, at least a little.
Ernst is led to a basement laboratory where he is instructed to guard a mysterious ‘cube’. At the same time somewhere else, or at a different time in the same place, or somewhere in some combination of the two, Swedish Sister of Mercy Elsa Brändström is caring for prisoners of war in Siberia.
Other things happen, too.
Wait a minute. Something doesn’t add up, as it’s said in novels. Who’s sabotaging the text, and who’s in charge? And what does the cube have to do with all of this?
Mikko Rimminen is a Finlandia Prize winning author with his novel Red Nose Day (2010).
“The language in The Most Natural Thing in the World makes experiments in a way rarely seen in Finnish literature. The one thing that emerges is the joy of imagination and writing.”
– Suomen Kuvalehti magazine
“There is ‘something’ so good in the novel and in Rimminen’s writing, that it is impossible to put it in words.”
– Savon Sanomat newspaper
Also available:
If It Looks Like It (2019)
The Tag (2013)
Red Nose Day (2010)
The Block (2007)
Park Life (2004)
About the author:
Mikko Rimminen