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Editorial

This'n'that
Maria Antas on the short-story writer Birgitta Boucht; Helena Sinervo on the poet Kirsti Simonsuuri; Anita Konkka on the Literature Express; Finns who seek the sunny south; Bill Gates prize for Helsinki City Library; Finnish Canadians; literary prizes

Birgitta Boucht
I'll never forget you
An extract from the novel Mariposa (Schildts, 1999), translated by Silvester Mazzarella
Two friends meet in a bar after a long break in this short story by Birgitta Boucht (born 1940). It is a relationship that is kept alive by habit; but when one of them says she is going away, the resulting revelations still have the power to wound

Kirsti Simonsuuri
Until the sun rises
Poems from Rakkaus tuli kun lähdin maan ääriin ('Love came when I left for the ends of the earth', Tammi, 2000), translated by Anselm Hollo
Almost all of the poems in this new collection by Kirsti Simonsuuri (born 1945) speak of love, happiness and joy – but their rhythm and sounds reveal melancholy and pain

Carl Ludvig Engel
Letters from a small town
Extracts from Kirjeet. Brev. Briefe 1816–1840 ('Letters 1816–1840'), edited by Mikael Sundman (Helsinki Society, 1989), and Helsinki City Archive. Translated from German by Anselm Hollo
The architect Carl Ludvig Engel (1778–1840) was sent to Helsinki by order of the Russian tsar with the commission to build a new city as capital of the grand duchy of Finland. The result was an extraordinary monument to his talents as an urbanist, and a life in a country he came to like – but the personal cost, as his letters reveal, lay in separation from his family and friends, and the fact that his fame never reached his native Germany.
Introduction by Vilhelm Helander

Juhani Tolvanen
Moomin world
Muumisisarukset. Tove ja Lars Jansson – Muumipeikko-sarjakuvan tarina; Vid min svans! Tove och Lars Janssons tecknade Muminserie ('Moomin siblings. Tove and Lars Jansson – the story of the Moomin cartoon strip' WSOY, Schildts, 2000)
Tove Jansson (born 1914), artist, writer and mother of theMoomins, was also, in the 1950s and 1960s, a cartoonist with an international reputation: the Moomin strip cartoon was read in 20 different countries throughout the world. Juhani Tolvanen tells the story of how, drawn first by Tove and subsequently by her brother Lars, the Moomins conquered the hearts of the readers of the London Evening News, and then those of the world

Epic labours
Kalevala 1999 is a translation of the Kalevala from the original, 1849 version into contemporary language by Kai Nieminen. But why translate Finnish into Finnish? asks fellow poet and translator Anselm Hollo

Kai Nieminen
Lemminkäinen, unfazed
An extract from Kalevala 1999 (Finnish Literature Society, 1999), a new prose translation of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, by Kai Nieminen, translated into English by Anselm Hollo

Tuomas Nevanlinna
A brush with death
A short story from Hyväkuntoisena taivaaseen ('Getting to heaven in good shape', Tammi, 1999)
Tuomas Nevanlinna finds the grim reaper a bright fellow, concerned about his public image

Reviews

David Kirby
Glorious isolation?
Menneisyyden tutkijat ja metodien vartijat. Matka suomalaiseen historiankirjoitukseen (Scholars of history and guardians of methods. A journey into Finnish historiography) by Pekka Ahtiainen & Jukka Tervonen

Liisi Huhtala
Burden of proof
Finlands svenska litteraturhistoria I–II (A history of Finland-Swedish literature I–II)

Frankfurt supplement

Jarl Hellemann
What price books?
The production of books in small-language areas requires government support. In Finland, the problem is compounded by the country's success as an internet pioneer: Finns increasingly rely on their WAP phones, not books, for information and entertainment. Jarl Hellemann, who has a long career as a publisher behind him, examines the views of a new research project on the future of the book

Statistics

New translations

Select bibliography

Letter from Toronto
Hildi Hawkins finds herself thinking about identity in Toronto – for a moment, a Finno-Ugrian city


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