How is it that everything is always different, and despite endless effort nothing changes?
Author: Satu Taskinen
Finnish original: Täydellinen paisti
Publisher: Teos Publishers, 2011
Genre: Literary fiction
Number of pages: 306 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, German translation, English sample, French sample, Hungarian sample
Rights sold: Germany, Transit
Taru Korhonen is preparing a pork roast in her Vienna kitchen. It is a relatively important task, as her husband’s mother and sister are coming to eat at one o’clock. Unless things have changed, they will arrive on the dot and demand to be served immediately.
The next-door neighbor, the retired actress Frau Berger, is more or less voluntarily forced to experience the difficulties of roasting pork, when ambiguities and complexities appear in the recipe Taru has selected. Considerable efforts and small setbacks aside, everything seems to be progressing perfectly well, and Taru has only one wish: “No more surprises.” Her wish is not granted.
Her husband’s niece, the blossoming and politically conscious 15-year-old Elisabeth, shows up for the meal. Frau Berger eats pork, even though she is a Jew. The husband’s mother and sister Marie-Luisa do everything wrong. Nor does her marriage with the Austrian appear to be watertight, either.
The Perfect Steak is a sumptuous novel of alienation, of the desire, force, or impossibility of belonging to the group. It is about the attempt to do what’s right – or simply to survive from moment to moment.
The novel won Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize given to the best debut novel of the year, the Academic Bookstore’s Debut of the Year Award and was a nominee of Le Prix du Livre Européen in 2012.
“Satu Taskinen’s The Perfect Steak is a stunning debut novel. […] It will make you laugh until you cry.”
– Keskisuomalainen newspaper
Author’s website:
http://www.satutaskinen.com/de/
Also available:
Cathedral (2014)
Children (2017)
About the author:
Satu Taskinen