We are continuing our creative literary interviews series with HLA’s writers! Juhani Karila talks about the incredible inspirations and turns in his autumn sensation, Fishing for the Little Pike. And of course, the entertaining questionnaire! Read the interview here.
(Photo: Laura Malmivaara)
We are continuing our creative literary interviews series with HLA’s writers! Piia Leino, the winner of EU Prize for Literature and the Helsinki Metropolitan Library prize, on her newest novel Heaven, societal apathy and why we need dystopian books today. And of course, the entertaining questionnaire! Read the interview here.
(Photo: Mikko Rasila)
What a wonderful autumn to HLA’s authors! It was announced today that one of our nonfiction highlights, The Weather that Changed the World by Marcus Rosenlund will be honoured with the State Award for Information Publication.
The award is given yearly since 1968. The number of recipients varies every year and nominations are primarily given to fiction and nonfiction books, radio and TV programmes and newspapers articles that had the most significant contribution to the information publication during the previous year. The amount of each award is 15,000 euros, except for the lifelong award (20,000 euros).
The Weather that Changed the World is a true masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. It explains not so much about how we changed the weather, but rather, how the weather has changed us. Binding connections to our time, Rosenlund shows how the climate has always had impact on historical events – even the ones we thought we were well familiar with. As the author himself has commented: “I wanted to write a book about things people didn’t know they wanted to know”. The result is as informative as it is entertaining, and beloved among the readers: the fourth edition of the book has just reached the Finnish readers, and rights have been sold to four territories: Estonia, (Ühinenud Ajakirjad), Hungary (Cser Kiadó), World Spanish (Elefanta) and most recently, Turkey (Kaplumbaa).
Last year the award was given to another HLA’s writer, Joonas Pörsti for his nonfiction The Enchantment of Propaganda.
Congratulations to the author!
Autumn season has started off… well, quite amazingly for us. In addition to the sales of Piia Leino’s novel Heaven and Juhani Karila’s Fishing for the Little Pike earlier this month, we are now happy to announce two more.
Minna Rytisalo’s awarded bestseller Lempi has been sold to Jumava, one of the biggest publishers in Latvia. The novel has recently won the public vote in Helmet – Helsinki Metropolitan Library – Literature Prize competition. The prize is given yearly to a future classic of Finnish literature. In addition to that, it was shortlisted as the favourite book by German-speaking booksellers in Switzerland, also for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, the Runeberg Prize and the Lappi Literature Prize. It won the Blogistania Finlandia Prize, voted by Finnish bloggers as the best novel of 2016, the Thank You for the Book Prize awarded by the Finnish Booksellers’, Librarians’ and Libraries Associations, and the Botnia Prize. The novel has sold over 25,000 copies so far, and it is the fourth foreign rights sale for it.
Matti Airola’s cheerful and inventive Dads’ and Daughters’ Braiding Book has been sold to Fragment, an imprint of Albatros, the biggest publisher in Czech Republic. It is the sixth foreign rights sale for the book, which was a huge commercial success in Finland upon its release.
Congratulations to the authors!
Before even being published in Finland, Juhani Karila’s new novel Fishing for the Little Pike caused quite a sensation among foreign publishers. And we are so thrilled to announce that the World French rights has now been sold to La Peuplade in Canada.
La Peuplade has made its name as a youthful and passionate publisher with ‘assertive, recognizable and necessary’ contemporary titles on its list. It has previously published such Finnish authors as Tove Jansson and Aki Ollikainen, as well as internationally famous, outstanding writers Niviaq Korneliussen, Anne Cathrine Bomann, Dagur Hjartarson and others.
Le Peuplade’s imprint Fictions du Nord has a lot of success both in France and in Canada, and the books are distributed everywhere in the French World by CDE (Gallimard) and Dimedia (in Canada).
As the publisher stated about Karila’s book: “Fishing for the Little Pike takes the reader to an incredible fishing journey through the Laplandish folklore full of imps, monsters and mysterious creatures – a world that strongly reminds the one of the Moomins Valley and Arto Paasilinna works. It’s funny and dark, witty and poetic. The kind of book, full of marvels, that francophone readers need.”
Karila’s publisher in Finland is Siltala, and the book is due to be published in a couple of weeks. Congratulations!