Stories of fourteen everyday objects and their owners come together in the haven of lost property.
Author: Leena Krohn
Finnish original: Kadotus
Publisher: Teos, 2018
Genre: literary fiction
Number of pages: 192 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, Swedish translation
Rights sold: Denmark, Jensen & Dalgaard; Sweden, Bakhåll
The city is celebrating the Night of the Arts. On the streets, it is impossible to separate between real and performance. Roaming the streets there is an aggressive rap artist, a lady walking a dog called Bitula, a silhouette artist and Miss Time.
In the center of events, characters and all commotion, there is the lone employee of the city’s lost property office, who is again delivered lost objects. Each object carries its own story with it.
The 13 individual stories in Leena Krohn’s novel Perdition weave a web of meanings. Its events and characters stretch, bring to focus, and rock the reality, with the characters making sharp comments on our world marching to its end.
The crystal-clear narration moves simultaneously back and forth, and Krohn’s amazing skill to write about age-old themes while portending the future with fear and humour takes the
reader deep into the core of the novel.
“An extraordinary writer who deserves to be better known to readers in English.”
– Kirkus starred review
“Krohn writes in beautiful, crystal-clear sentences carefully thought out to evoke an atmosphere larger than life. Every word in the text is significant, and often the complex sentences grow into almost lyrical observations on the innumerable levels and mysteries of existence. […] Krohn’s book contains more carefully elaborated ideas than the entire literary production of many writers. Alongside the nature of reality, questions arise on the meaning of time and art, the concept of self, the power of money and mathematics, the complexities of human relationships and a host of other fascinating themes. Underneath it all pulsates fear of what lies ahead.”
– Helsingin Sanomat newspaper on Perdition
Also available:
Things I Never Learned (2021)
A Letter to Buddha (2016)
Mistake (2015)
Hotel Sapiens (2013)
Children of the Sun (2011)
False Window (2009)
My Home is Riioraa (2008)
The Bee Pavilion (2006)
Datura (2001)
Mathematical Creatures, or Shared Dreams (1992)
Umbra (1990)
Gold of Ophir (1988)
Tainaron (2006 | 1985)
Doña Quixote and Other Citizens (1983)
The Pelican’s New Clothes – A Story from the City (1976)
The Green Revolution (1970 | 2020)
About the author:
Leena Krohn