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Editorial: The face in the mirror

This’n’that
What we read... or don’t; Annukka Peura on the new poems by Merja Virolainen; Jarmo Papinniemi on Riku Korhonen’s first novel; Tuula Hökkä on Eeva-Liisa Manner’s short prose; literary prizes; change in Books from Finland editorial board; Eeva Joenpelto in memoriam

Merja Virolainen
Do you see?
Poems from Olen tyttö, ihanaa! (‘Wonderful, I’m a girl!’, Tammi, 2003), translated by David Hackston
Hanging upside down from an apple tree is what the little girl of the poems by Merja Virolainen (born 1962) is doing in the bygone world of a happy childhood – but her existence is not without fears

Riku Korhonen
Suburban dreams
Extracts from the novel Kahden ja yhden yön tarinat (‘Tales from two and one nights’, Sammakko, 2003), translated by David Hackston
Childhood and youth in the 1970s and 1980s is the central theme in the first novel by Riku Korhonen (born 1972), set in the world of a Turku suburb amid droning cranes, concrete high-rise flats, rocky pine woods and the flying arrows of the ten-year-old Geronimos

Eeva-Liisa Manner
An evening with Mr Popotamus
A story from the collection of short prose, Kävelymusiikkia pienille virtahevoille (‘Passacaglia for small hippopotami’, Tammi, 1957), translated by Herbert Lomas
A woman one day finds she has a very polite house guest who likes to cook, play Bach on the piano and read T.S. Eliot. But since the guest is a hippopotamus, the relationship may not last... This absurd, amusing and melancholic short story by the modernist poet Eeva-Liisa Manner (1921–1995) has become a classic

Anna-Leena Nissilä
From Haifa to Helsinki
A Palestinian Christian born in Israel grows up speaking Arabic and English, is educated by Catholic nuns in Italian and French, and writes in Finnish about her polyglot and multicultural childhood in Haifa. An interview with Umayya Abu-Hanna (born 1961)

Umayya Abu-Hanna
Relative values
Extracts from the autobiographical novel Nurinkurin (’Upside down, inside out’, WSOY, 2003), translated by Hildi Hawkins
Couldn’t God just do good, pure good, asks the little girl, wondering why some angels, like Satan, rebelled. The answers she gets to her religious questions are puzzling, which is what growing up is too: hair grows by unfathomed measures, not to mention two strange, impudent and curious bumps that appear on her chest

Pertti Lassila
What makes a classic?
The poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–1877) has long been regarded as Finland’s ‘national’ poet, a symbol of love of the country, of the future existence of the Finnish nation. This year his 200th anniversary is celebrated. But how does his poetry, from and for another world, read today?

Risto Ahti
Sounds familiar
Living in a Finland ruled by Russia, J.L. Runeberg wrote in the language spoken in Sweden. For the Swedes, claims the poet Risto Ahti, J.L. Runeberg is the most important writer after August Strindberg; but he has been badly served by old translations into Finnish. Ahti’s own experience of translating Runeberg demonstrates that the work national poet is alive and well – and quintessentially Finnish in character

Johan Ludvig Runeberg
Sven Duva
A poem from Fänrik Ståls sägner (Tales of Ensign Stål, 1848–1860), translated by Judy Moffett (first published in Books from Finland 4/1985)

Tuomo-Juhani Vuorenmaa
Up close & personal
Photographs by Ismo Hölttö, published in People in the lead role. Photographs of Finns (author’s edition, 1991)
Ismo Hölttö used his camera lens to collect life stories of Finns in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a period when a massive move from the countryside to the towns was taking place as people sought work in the south or in Sweden, and a whole way of life was disappearing. In this huge book Hölttö has captured 239 intensive, touching close-ups of country folk and city people

Kersti Juva
Pun and games
Finnish and English are like east and west. How can they be made to meet in a translated novel is discussed by Kersti Juva (born 1948), whose work includes translation of the third volume of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
This is the first article in a series in which literary translators into Finnish write about their work

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New translations

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Letter from in here
In her first, semi-autobiographical, novel, Ranya Paasonen (then Ranya ElRamly; born 1974), Auringon asema (‘The position of the sun’, 2002, forthcoming in Swedish and German; see Books from Finland 4/2002) wrote about a young woman with an Egyptian father and Finnish mother. In this first letter of a series written by Finnish authors this year, she has chosen to send us a letter from... somewhere in the realm of fiction
 
 
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