News

We are just beginning to recover from the whirlwind of the Frankfurt Fair, and now sensational news has reached us from Sweden: We’ll Just Ride Past, the YA novel by Ellen Strömberg is nominated for the prestigious August Prize!

In We’ll Just Ride Past Strömberg captures the life of ninth-graders in that recognizable phase in life when you have a real drive to be independent and to discover and define your identity, and when friendships have a huge impact on your decisions and desires. Strömberg has a knack for portraying the emotional landscape and world view of young people in a convincing way and she masterfully depicts the anxieties and emotional turmoil teenagers face daily.

The August jury motivated the nomination as follows:

With sensitivity and accuracy [Strömberg] describes the turning point of adolescence, when the fantasies about who you want to be are suddenly put into practice, friendships are put to test and first love feels both alluring and terrifying. With the greatest respect for both her readers and her characters, Ellen Strömberg gives new life to the most iconic motif in youth literature.

Ellen Strömberg is a Finnish author writing in Swedish, and her books have garnered praise from critics and readers alike. She lives in Jakobstad in the Ostrobothnia region of Finland. We’ll Just Ride Past is her fourth book.

The August Prize is Sweden’s biggest literary award given to a book published in Sweden and it is awarded annually in three categories: the best novel, the best children’s or YA book, and the best nonfiction book of the year. The winners receive 100,000 SEK and a bronze August statuette.

Congratulations, Ellen!

The success of Pirkko Saisio’s awarded trilogy which has recently been known as the “Helsinki Trilogy” is continuing: the North American English rights have been acquired by Two Lines Press.

Two Lines fell for Saisio’s works already a year ago when they acquired the third, Finlandia Prize winning novel Red Book of Farewells (2003), which is to come out in English in April 2023. Now the press has acquired the other two stand-alone titles of the trilogy, too: The Lowest Common Multiple (1988) and The Backlight (2000), thanks to our wonderful co-agent Elianna Kan from Regal | Hoffman & Associates.

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

Two Lines Press is an award-winning press committed to publishing outstanding literature in translation with a focus on overlooked classics and exceptional new writing.

Pirkko 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 only last year from her bestselling novel Passion – a color-saturated, Tarkovskian chronicle of Europe.

Read also news about
the Dutch pre-empt
the French pre-empt
the German pre-empt.

Happy deal news from Frankfurt: the delightfully anarchist princess story The Princess Who Did a Runner written by Saara Kekäläinen and illustrated by Netta Lehtola has found its home at Straarup & Co. in Denmark.

Young princess Leona is expected by her parents to marry a prince and save the kingdom – but Leona is having none of it. She takes a hike and jumps from one fairytale to the next in order to save herself from the age-old burdens that lurk around every corner such as marriage and household chores. A refreshing take on princess tales proves that one can have both self-respect and empathy for others.

Straarup & Co. is a Danish publishing house that publishes books for both children and adults. They have previously acquired the Karin Erlandsson’s novels Home and Night Express and Eva Frantz’s  Mystery of Helmersbruk Manor from HLA’s list.

The Princess Who Did a Runner is not yet published in Finland, and we are very excited for this great start. Congratulations to the authors!

While publishers around the world keep complaining about the tough times they are experiencing, Ukrainians, as always, just get to the action – and make an offer for two books on HLA’s list!

Astrolabe, a beautiful Ukrainian publishing house, established in Lviv in 2000, has just acquired the rights for Before the Birds, a novel by Merja Mäki, recounting a family’s experiences during the evacuation journey from war-ridden Karelia, and Apogee, a sci-fi thriller by the EU Prize for Literature winner Piia Leino.

Astrolabe publishes literature of various genres, including fiction, poetry, books on philosophy, psychology, history, political science, law, economics, arts etc. The publisher also prides itself in contributing to Ukrainian culture by releasing new translations of medieval and early modern literature, such as The Song of Roland, the Divine Comedy by Dante, the first Ukrainian translations of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and an Old English epic Beowulf, among others. It is also the publisher of Piia Leino’s novel Heaven (2018).

Before the Birds (Gummerus, 2022) was an instant commercial and critical success in Finland, selling over 10,000 copies and becoming a #1 Bestselling Audiobook immediately after the publication. This is the first foreign rights sale for the novel.

In the winter of 1939, much of Finland’s eastern province Karelia was ceded to the Soviet Union, which becomes the setting for the novel. The main protagonist, a young woman called Alli, is suddenly forced to leave her Karelian home behind and embark on an onerous trek across Finland, in order to find a new home.

Not only must she now endure the strenuous evacuation, but also face an unexpected, life-changing responsibility, come to terms with the complicated relationship with her own mother, and somehow, continue to dream. 

“Mäki does such a vivid job leading the reader on the evacuees’ journey that one feels one is there oneself, freezing and feet covered in bloody blisters. […] The novel expands my understanding of what it means – and how it feels – to leave everything behind.”
– Helsingin Sanomat newspaper

Apogee (S&S, 2021) is set in the year 2045, when the earth’s march toward ecological catastrophe has continued, and the environmental movement is radicalizing.

When the owner of a chain of clothing stores dies in a freak smart-device accident, the police do not initially suspect a crime. However, journalist Aaro Kangas is assigned to look into the potential radicalization of an ecological community at Oak Valley, and unwittingly ends up at the heart of an ambitious plan for annihilation. The investigation quickly turns incredibly personal – and incredibly dangerous. 

Foreign rights of Apogee have also been sold to Bulgaria and Hungary.

“A seamlessly written, fast-paced novel that combines crime mystery with dystopian visions of the near future.”
– Helsingin sanomat newspaper

Congratulations to both authors, and most importantly – SLAVA UKRAINI!

Kari Hotakainen’s The Disciple, published on 24th August 2022, rose immediately to #2 on the Finnish bestseller list of August. Hotakainen has a long record of hitting the top ten with his novels, with the novel Story topping the list in 2020, and the biography The Unknown Kimi Räikkönen selling over 200,000 copies in Finland and over 100,000 abroad.

The Disciple is a ferocious novel about social exclusion, revenge, and the search for connection. It follows Maria who over the course of three days settles accounts in a fierce way that forces the reader to think about the meaning of life, the problems inherent in a middle-class lifestyle, and the part we play as individuals on the final precipice of an era.

“The rhetorical blades of Disciple strike with precision, and a dark, laconic humor sustains the work.”
– Helsingin Sanomat newspaper

“Hotakainen understands the most interesting thing about revenge is not the reason someone seeks it, its justification. What’s essential is that the revenge-seeker at least momentarily take control of the situation, act on her own terms. Communication is a major value in contemporary society, but those seeking vengeance have lost faith in its redemptive power. Disciple is a statement that has no interest in turning into a conversation – this is one of the remarkable things about it. Although the book is primarily constructed of Maria’s monologues, the text never feels heavy. The end is solid. This may be the best Hotakainen I’ve ever read, or at least the most pugnacious.”
– Suomen Kuvalehti magazine