Jari Tervo
Decent people
A short story from Taksirengin rakkaus ('The love of the taxi-driver', WSOY, 1998), translated by Hildi Hawkins
The former newspaper reporter Jari Tervo (born 1959), now a successful novelist and quiz-show celebrity, writes about the seamier side of life. His subjects are mostly petty criminals and losers, but his crisp language is always a winner. And he can find a story even in a pork chop....

Risto Ahti
The only thing for loving
Poems from Iloiset harhaopit ('Happy heresies', WSOY, 1998), translated by Herbert Lomas
Risto Ahti (born 1945) tells stories in the manner of Aristophanes, throwing surreal riddles and paradoxes in his readers' paths. In his latest collection he also plays with rhyme - causing headaches for his translator, Herbert Lomas

Sari Vuoristo
The ring
A short story from the collection Irti ('Away', Gummerus, 1998), translated by Hildi Hawkins
The quiet, meditative stories of Sari Vuoristo (born 1964) deal with departure and detachment, real or attempted. The stories are closely linked with their landscapes; the elegiac tale printed here is set amid the dusty gold of Greece in late summer

Virpi Suutari
A place in the sun
Life in a playful post-modern purpose-built housing development should be fun. The new suburb of Kallahti in eastern Helsinki offers its inhabitants airy piazzas and pergolas in pastel hues - but what is it like to live there if you don't have any work? What dreams are possible in a place where almost one in six is unemployed?
Photographs by Susanna Helke

Bo Carpelan
Fruits of reading
Poems; extracts from the novel Benjamins bok ('Benjamin's book', Schildts, 1997), translated by David McDuff
The Finland-Swedish writer Bo Carpelan (born 1926) published his first collection of poems more than 50 years ago, in 1946; since then, he has also written novels, children's books and drama. But poetry remains his 'innermost region', he says in conversation with Mårten Westö, a poet 40 years his junior

Johanna Hankonen
Out of the forest
Even when they live in towns, Finns remain country people at heart, writes architect Johanna Hankonen in her personal survey of life and housing in Helsinki since the 1960s

Putte Wilhelmsson
Picture perfect
News travel faster than ever before, although the media revolution has not succeeded in making us into better people. But writing continues - and the importance of literature is undiminished, argues Putte Wilhelmsson in an essay first delivered as a keynote speech at the PEN Congress held in Helsinki last September

Saska Snellman
Another place, another time
For Saska Snellman, Karelia, home of the 400,000 people who were forced to leave as a result of the Soviet occupation during and after the Second World War, has always meant otherness: the family homeland - he is a third-generation refugee - in which everything was always different from in Finland

Reviews

Seppo Zetterberg
Karelia revisited
Karjala. Historia, kansa, kulttuuri [Karelia. History, people, culture], edited by Pekka Nevalainen & Hannes Sihvo

Jukka Rislakki
Uncle Koba
Stalin ja suomalaiset [Stalin and the Finns] by Timo Vihavainen

Kari Selén
Local heroes
Kansallisgalleria. Suuret suomalaiset 1-5 [National gallery. Great Finns 1-5], edited by Allan Tiitta; Kansallisbiografia [The national dictionary of biography]

New translations

Select bibliography

Jyrki Lehtola
Letter from Tampere
Who's Mika Häkkinen? The MacLaren driver who advertises for Boss? Only the Finns remember that he is Finnish, because Finns believe that talking about Finnishness is fascinating, and not just for Finns....

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