Shortlist for this year’s Finlandia Prize announced
The Finnish Book Foundation has announced the shortlist of novels, children’s books and non-fiction books that are nominated for this year’s Finlandia Prize, Finland’s most prestigious literary award. The award sum is 30,000 euros.
The 2009 Finlandia Prize Nominees
The 2009 Finlandia Junior Prize Nominees
The 2009 Tieto-Finlandia Prize for Non-Fiction Nominees
The 2009 Finlandia Prize Nominees
Turkka Hautala: Salo (Gummerus)
The theme of Turkka Hautala’s debut novel is one of human destiny. One by one the residents of Salo take their turns speaking, in a chain-like structure. The spectrum of viewpoints extends from the anguish of a factory manager to the everyday compassion of the seller at a sausage kiosk, but the personalities merge into a cohesive whole. Hautala takes ordinary people as his characters and he knows how to see the humorous side of their actions. The novel is written in supple language using different registers and dialects. Salo builds a mosaic portrait of the declining Finland of today, and the author’s gaze is sharp and fresh.
Kari Hotakainen: Ihmisen osa (The Human Lot, Siltala)
At a bookfair, a writer meets a button seller who sells him her life story for 7,000 euros. Along with the sale, the reader receives a large slice of Finnish life and the history of entrepreneurship. The small business owner’s grind grind is replaced nowadays by endless meetings and imagination for sale. Like its characters, broken under the blows of an unrestricted market economy, Kari Hotakainen’s novel is customer-oriented but strongly resistant to change, critical of society, warm and intelligent.
Antti Hyry: Uuni (The Oven, Otava)
In Hyry’s novel, the reader’s interest is not directed to a plot or character portraits. There are no dramatic turning points in this description of the construction of a baking oven. On the surface, Hyry’s writing is reminiscent of the kinds of modernists who build their texts on simple perceptions of the world of objects in order to emphasize incompleteness in their sketches of the world. Instead, the person in Hyry’s book is taking concrete steps to establish a home in the world. His tasks gain their significance from the meaningful places of life in its entirety. This portrait of everyday life thus opens out into a cosmos where the central character is living the life he was meant to live.
Marko Kilpi: Kadotetut (The Lost Ones, Gummerus)
Kilpi’s work explodes the conventions of the detective genre, because attention is focused not on the intellectual puzzle of solving a crime or understanding a criminal’s motivation. Instead, crime is taken seriously as a psychological, humanistic moral and societal phenomenon. The violent criminal is seen as psychologically abnormal, while at the same time his activities provide the impetus for the popular media’s pursuit of simple labeling of our society. The police are shown as psychologically stressed due to their experiences of the human suffering and cruelty inherent in violent crime, and the victims of crime are examined not only in the narrow terms of rescue or death – rather, the possibility that those “rescued” are so psychologically wounded that they may never be able to live a normal life is seriously considered. Kilpi’s book reveals how deeply traumatic violent crime is for everyone it touches.
Merete Mazzarella: Ingen saknad, ingen sorg (No regret, no sorrow, Söderströms / Atlantis)
Merete Mazzarella’s novel is a nuanced and empathetic description of a day in the life of 79-year-old Zacharias Topelius, at the same time viewing Topelius as tied to his own time, giving the portrayal a delicate irony. On the one hand, the novel is a study of old age with all that it entails: memory, renunciation, loss, emotion, the reevaluation of perceptions, even doubts about one's past deeds and thoughts. On the other hand, the book is a study of the Finnish mentality of the 1800s through the contemplation one who would in future be a central cultural figure. In a Topelius family circle made up for the most part of women, women’s issues in various historical eras gain particular significance.
Tommi Melender: Ranskalainen ystävä (The French Friend, WSOY)
Tommi Melender’s novel is about friendship in a world where friendship is a diminishing resource. At the beginning of the novel, a well-known academic, identifying with Gustave Flaubert’s disgust with modern life, leaves his job and escapes to a small town in France, where he encounters certain darker aspects of contemporary European reality. The novel’s skillful composition combines a contemporary portrait of the European literary heritage with the bleak and pessimistic tones of a reluctance to believe in solidarity between people, or the possibility of friendship, or love itself.
The 2009 Finlandia Junior Nominees
Siiri Enoranta: Omenmean vallanhaltija (The Ruler of Omenmea, Robustos)
In Siiri Enoranta’s novel, two girls, Ninir and Nezsandra, have a trouble-free friendship, until Ninir falls into quicksand in the Death Wilderness and is paralysed. Nezsandra blames herself for the accident and decides to save her beloved friend from this fate. With her six-legged mount Humu, Nez embarks on a daring journey.
This book is about the friendship and the layers of trust that exist both between children and in their relationships with adults. Another theme that runs throughout is power, which shows an ever-changing face. Everything is not as it seems – the ugly is, in fact, beautiful, and the most treacherous dangers of all are the ones closest to home.
The author skilfully wrestles with moral issues. Is loyalty more important than saving society? The book is technically and narratively clear and pulls the reader into the journey with Nez and her steed from one world into another.
Antti Halme: Metalliveljet (Metal Brothers, Otava)
“What do you think about going to Norway for the summer, Harri-berry? Sounds pretty rad, eh?” Harri put his head in his hands. Dad’s street lingo was from the last millennium, way before rap – months before the invention of the folk dance, in fact.
But Harri does go to Norway to visit his father’s business acquaintance and his nephew, Ville. In spite of a difficult beginning, Harri and Ville’s shared musical tastes kick their friendship into motion like the first riff in Highway to Hell.
Halme’s book is a combination of a band story, a thriller, and a coming of age tale. The boys exciting adventure moves through a city ruled by racist gangs that unites the the boys’ band in opposition. Their frightening experiences are realistic and the pace of the unrolling events leaves the reader breathless.
The novel has an outsider’s point of view in many ways, and it challenges our assumptions about ourselves and others. Halme has succeeded in writing a book that is morally unambiguous without being moralistic. The story is lightened by its humorous and relentless trash-talking between the boys. Metalliveljet proves that even if your not the best, or the best looking, you can have fun together.
Juba: Minerva, Jääkarhun sydän (Minerva: The Polar Bear’s Heart, Otava)
Juba’s Minerva has given Finnish children’s comics an active, energetic girl hero. In Minerva’s flying rocking chair we travel to the North Pole, where elephant seals are making their living as oil magnates. To win the love of an elephant seal girl, the hapless suitor Yrjänä must bring her the heart of the last polar bear. Minerva flies to the rescue with a diverse menagerie of creatures, including a sarcastic hermit penguin and an albatross who still lives with his parents who speak particularly to adult readers.
Visually, The Polar Bear’s Heart is full of motion that carries the story forward. In addition to its comic book style, there is also a picture book quality to the story: the drawings are large, detailed, and clearly framed. The roughness of the drawings and expressiveness of the characters draw the reader in to pore over the details of each page.
A theme of environmental conservation is smoothly incorporated into the entire book, in which irresponsible behaviour is clearly connected to wealth, greed, and power. Friendship overcomes the barriers between species, and little Minerva battles courageously on behalf of the enormous polar bear. If each of us helps just a little, we might be able to reawaken hope. The polar bear doesn’t necessarily have to be the last of his species.
Mari Kujanpää: Minä ja Muro (Muro and Me, Illustrated by Aino-Maija Metsola, Otava)
“There are two kinds of adults: dentist-adults and teacher-adults. Dentist-adults talk adult language among themselves as if there were no kids listening. Teacher-adults try to be funny and ask a lot of questions.”
Minä ja Muro is a touching portrait of a sad little girl. The book vividly describes the insecurity of children and the indifference of adults. Home and school are hard, but they can be endured. A child bears the brunt of a mixed-up world, but it gradually begins to make sense, even though her parents and teachers provide no help. “I have to stop it – face all the bad things and save Mom and Dad and Pauli. Otherwise everyone will know that Mom and Dad aren’t what they should be.” Readers of different ages will experience the book at different levels. In spite of its sadness, the text is not too heavy for young readers.
Kujanpää and Metsola’s text does not actively seek solutions to problems. The girl will find a way to make it through – whether it’s a new friend or a new interest. The weightiness of the narrative is balanced by the warmth and gentleness of the illustration. The book is at its best when children and adults have an opportunity to read it together.
Paula Noronen: Emilian päiväkirja. Supermarsu pelastaa silakat. (Emilia’s Diary: Superguinea Rescues the Herring, Illustrated by Pauliina Mäkelä, Gummerus)
What should you do when your school is infested with mould, the Baltic is polluted, and there are many other problems in society? Call Emilia, aka Superguinea, of course. You need super powers to get all the herring into a bathtub and all the lake water to Venus. Otherwise adults will never understand that saving the environment is really important. The only place super powers don’t help is in family life, when Emilia’s mother takes up with a boyfriend who has the worst table manners in East Helsinki.
Paula Noronen’s Supermarsu is an irresistibly funny, madcap book, where nonsense makes sense. It’s not a typical “just for kids” book – it’s a reading experience that captivates people of all ages with its giggle-inducing, laconic wisecracks. Pauliina Mäkelä’s bold, colour-saturated illustrations are fit nicely into Noronen’s text, as well as her social critique. Noronen balances day to day mishaps with humour, but when it comes to large ethical questions, she is in earnest. Supermarsu provides a moral lesson: superpowers must only be used for good.
Maria Turtschaninoff: Arra. Legender från Lavora (Arra: Legends of Lavora, Söderströms)
Maria Turtschaninoff’s book is the story of a girl named Arra, born and raised in hopelessness, rejected and despised by her family. Arra doesn’t learn to talk like other children, because no one takes any notice of her or speaks to her. Speech has no meaning for her. Instead Arra grows up in the natural world, becomes a part of nature. She listens and learns the song of the river, the fire, the earth, and the wind. With the help of her songs, she learns to control nature and begins to weave a self from it, the totality of her powers.
Power is a magnificent and dangerous thing. It can be used in the wrong way, to terrible effect. Luckily, someone comes into Arra’s life to help her learn to use her powers for good.
Arra is a poetically beautiful work of fantasy. Reading it feels like listening to a rhythmic hum, mysterious and soothing music that you can feel, see, taste, and smell.
The 2009 Tieto-Finlandia Prize for Non-Fiction Nominees
Hollmén, Roope: Juuret Karjalassa (Roots in Karelia, Facto)
Roope Hollmén presents a basic work on Karelia, Karelian history and Karelians that is multi-faceted and thorough. The book is a modern one, written with up-to-date information for today’s reader. It is an accessible work for those who do not have ties of their own to the province. The book is not only intended for those who, like Hollmén, are searching for their roots in Karelia, but also for any Finns interested in Karelian culture, which has over the years become a part of the larger Finnish culture. Information is presented insightfully and absorbingly, and with abundant illustrations.
Laurell Seppo (primary author): Valo merellä. Suomen majakat 1753-1906 (Light on the Sea: Finnish Lighthouses 1753-1906, with photography by Petri Porkola, Swedish translation by Pär-Henrik Sjöström, John Nurmisen Säätiö)
Seppo Laurell and the other editors of Valo merellä have collected an authoritative and very handsome defining work on Finnish lighthouses. With its text, pictures, and previously unknown original blueprints, the book is a comprehensive compendium of the lighthouses themselves, as well as their history and architecture. But the book doesn’t limit itself to the lighthouse as an institution. By positioning the development of the lighthouse in a historical context, it is also an account of the development of navigation. The work is thus a critical contribution to the history of the internationalisation of Finland. It is the story of how Finland opened itself to the world.
Maasola, Juha: Kirves (The Axe, Maahenki)
Juha Massola uses a particular, indispensable object to write about living cultural history. Through descriptions of the labour inextricably connected with the axe, the feelings associated with it, and the meanings arising from it, he sheds light on the entire way of life dictated by our geographical and environmental circumstances. By illuminating a familiar object and its various uses, Maasola says something universal about people and their endeavours and ability to survive in every era and every place. The message in this visually powerful book gets through to the reader.
Parpola, Antti - Åberg,Veijo: Metsävaltio. Metsähallitus ja Suomi 1859-2009 (A Forest Nation: The Finnish Forest and Park Service, 1859-2009, Edita)
Antti Parpola and Veijo Åberg have written a work that belongs at the pinnacle of corporate and institutional histories. The forest is one of the central themes of Finnish life, both as a means of livelihood and as a source of recreation. This competent, skilfully constructed and beautifully illustrated book describes the 150 year history of the administration of state-owned forests by the Finnish Forest and Park Service. It is a creditable presentation of the phases of development of the institution and its staff as well as a history of forest utilisation and the constant balancing of environmental demands. Its greatest achievement, however, is in reflecting the phases of development of the institution in relation to the societal changes that surrounded it. This makes the book as much a history of Finnish dependence on forests as it is a history of the Finnish forests themselves. By writing about the forest, Parpola and Åberg write about the history of Finnish modernisation.
Tandefelt, Henrika: Borgå 1809. Ceremoni och fest. SLS.
Porvoo 1809. Juhlamenoja ja tanssiaisia (Porvoo 1809: Festivals and Balls, SKS, Finnish translation by Jussi T. Lappalainen)
Henrika Tandefelt’s work deals with well-known historical events, but it succeeds in shedding new light on them. Events surrounding the birth of a nation in Porvoo 200 years ago are brought to life with close-up descriptions seen through the eyes of participants and observers of these events. Lively and perceptively chosen details pepper the text, and it is as if Tandefelt has carried the reader backwards in time. Carefully documented and well-organised, the book also sheds light on Porvoo politics, culture, and everyday life. Rarely has a history of such key events succeed so enjoyably in connecting the reader with the reality of the world that surrounded them.
Ylikangas, Mikko: Unileipää, kuolonvettä, spiidiä. Huumeet Suomessa 1800-1950 (Sleepbread, Deathwater, Speed: Drugs in Finland, 1800-1950, Atena)
Mikko Ylikangas’ book offers a new and surprising compendium of a little-examined aspect of our history. Drugs are a global threat usually understood as a product of contemporary society and globalisation. Ylikangas brings a historic point of view of Finland’s history of recreational drugs and drug addiction that is unknown to many readers. He presents a story that is in conflict with our traditional image of ourselves as a nation. He also takes his turn in the discussion of what it means to be Finnish. This carefully-written work opens a new window on the Finnish way of life. The description of the use of drugs throughout history also creates a new and interesting intersection of high and low culture.
