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Editorial

This'n'that
Tuva Korsström on the European Union's threatened Aristeion Translators' Prize; Soila Lehtonen on the novelist Riikka Ala-Harja; Jyrki Kiiskinen on the poetry of Lauri Otonkoski; Simopekka Virkkula on Matti Mäkelä's weather notes; literary prizes; Fabrizio Carbone on Arto Paasilinna; Anne Fried and Carl-Gustaf Lilius in memoriam

Riikka Ala-Harja
Like father, like daughter
Extracts from the novel Tom Tom Tom
(Gummerus, 1998), translated by Herbert Lomas
In this first novel by Riikka Ala-Harja (born 1967), a 25-year-old woman confronts her father, who has lived abroad for years. Blood proves thicker than water, but that does not necessarily mean that father and daughter like one another. What is more, the father is paralysed, and cannot speak. With warmth and humour, Ala-Harja describes the process whereby father and daughter learn to communicate

Lauri Otonkoski
No one can tell
Poems from Ahava (WSOY, 1998), translated by Herbert Lomas
According to Lauri Otonkoski (born 1959), poet and music critic, life is a kind of weird fugue. His new collection sets the earthiness of anecdote against the purity of the icon, thus tracking a third way between banality and the cloister

Matti Mäkelä
The snowfields of March
Extracts from Sääkirja
('Weather book', WSOY, 1998), translated by Hildi Hawkins
Matti Mäkelä, essayist and impassioned weather-spotter, takes a look at a phenomenon he claims could become the great trump card of Finnish winter tourism, if even half of its pleasures were known

Pirjo Hassinen
Close encounters
An extract from the novel Viimeinen syli
('The last embrace', Otava, 1998), translated by Hildi Hawkins.
Interview by Leena Härkönen
As a child, Pirjo Hassinen (born 1957) drew only people, often women. In the relationships she describes in her novels, relationships between men and women are central. Hassinen is no romantic - rather, she is a sharply analytical satirist. The theme of her new book is death in all its aspects - including the clinical

Jorma Puranen
Faces from the past
Introduction and photographs by Jorma Puranen from Kuvitteellinen kotiinpaluu/Imaginary Homecoming (Pohjoinen, 1999)
The photographer Jorma Puranen found some old archive boxes full of ethnographical images of the Sámi - in metropolitan Paris. He took them back to the wildernesses of Lapland and photographed them once more in their native landscape

Osmo Pekonen
Raising a storm
An essay edited from the collection Tuhat vuotta ('A thousand years', WSOY, 1998), translated by Hildi Hawkins
Shamanism fascinates the rational people of today as the keeper of a natural force that might still be awoken. In this essay, the mathematician Osmo Pekonen ponders the enduring mystery of the stone-age cult site of Astuvansalmi in eastern Finland

Reviews

Jyrki Räikkä
Father figures
Koulussa ja sodassa [At school and at war] by Mauno Koivisto; Tuntematon Koivisto [The unknown Koivisto] by Hannu Lehtilä

Christian Carpelan
Pots and people
Kivikauden Suomi [Finland in the Stone Age] by Matti Huurre

New translations

Select bibliography

Lars Sund
Letter from Uppsala
Lars Sund is a Finnish writer living in Sweden whose mother tongue is Swedish; his latest novel, about Finland's recent history, Colorado Avenue was published in 1997 (see Books from Finland 3/1997). He thinks he has become more and more stubbornly Finnish, living in the nourishing cultural and ethnic soup of Uppsala, the oldest university city in Sweden


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