Frenzy in Finland
Book Babes on the Baltic, Italy’s Newsstand Novellas,
And Germany’s Aesopian Menagerie
Having budged out of their Barcaloungers, reader-citizens are barging into bookshops all across Finland, where surveys reveal that the number of Finns who regularly read and buy books is climbing — 14% of those surveyed bought more than 10 books in 2003, up from 8% in 1995 — while the number of those couch potatoes who never bother with books has shrunk from 28% in 1995 to 22% in 2003. What’s the deal? Ilona Lindh, Foreign Fiction Editor for Finnish house Tammi, reports that “there seems to be a great interest in our own culture — history, language, customs — so Finnish fiction is more successful than translated fiction,” with crime and suspense being especially popular these days. Two of Tammi’s indigenous stars are Taavi Soininvaara, whose thrillers involving crime, terrorism, and lethal viruses have started to cause much panting among foreign publishers, and Juha Itkonen, whose first novel tells of the wrenching adjustments made by two American Mormons who wake up one fine morning in Finland. Lindh is also singing the praises of Leena Lehtolainen, who has injected a feminist angle into Finnish crime fiction since she made her precocious debut at age 12 with a novel for young readers. Her detective series started with the 1993 novel My First Murder and is up to eight titles so far, sold to as many countries.
Meanwhile, a mainstay on the Finnish list for more than 20 years, Arto Paasilinna, is also the most translated living author in Finland. He’s now sold abroad in 25 languages, and his best known work, The Year of the Hare — in which the stressed-out protagonist leaves his frenetic life behind to return to nature, in the company of, um, a young hare — was just published in the US by Dufour Editions. Paasilinna has been deemed “as much an element of Finnish autumn as falling birch leaves,” and praised for taking up “macabre themes such as suicide, Armageddon, and unemployment” and weaving them into humorous, therapeutic antidotes to despair.
The nation’s readers have also been hooked on promising “rookies,” according to Veikko Sonninen of the Finnish Book Publishers Association, foremost among them action-thriller maven Ilkka Remes, whose latest novel Endless Night sold 135,000 copies in just a couple of months. Then there’s 2002 Finlandia Prize recipient Kari Hotakainen, who explores the notion of “The Finnish Dream” in The Trench Road, which details the mediocre life of Matti Virtanen (it’s by far the most common Finnish name for men). The object of Virtanen’s desire is a “veteran house,” one of the homes built on free plots of land for men returning from battle. After his wife and daughter ditch him, snagging the house is the holy grail, and he sells off his possessions and turns to peddling erotic massages to raise cash. Hotakainen’s earlier novel, Heart Attacks, features a down-and-out factory worker/cinema buff who tries to force his way into the filming of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic, The Godfather. Hotakainen has been published in Germany (Fischer), the Slovak Republic (Slovenský Spisovatel), and elsewhere. For more on the Finn reading frenzy, contact Ilona Lindh at ilona.lindh@tammi.net and Veikko Sonninen at veikko.sonninen@skyry.net.
The Finns aren’t the only ones beefing up their personal libraries, as readers in Italy need travel no further than their local newsstand, with several daily and weekly newspapers continuing to develop new series in assorted areas of interest, ranging from art, music, and sports, to tourism, literature, and history. La Repubblica was the first daily out of the gates in 2002 (it has packaged 50 novels from the likes of Isabel Allende, Heinrich Böll, and James Joyce, each of which sold a whopping 500,000 copies) and others quickly followed suit. Armed with publicity channels to die for, newspapers are banking on their subscribers’ keenness for collectibles by running full-page color ads featuring photos of their latest series in its entirety. Newsstands, it should be noted, are a more familiar part of daily life than bookstores in Italy, and the stacks of new volumes that appear there on a weekly basis (favorably priced at just about 5 euros) have proven irresistible. The first titles (print runs have run as high as 1 million copies) are generally offered for free with the purchase of a newspaper. Italy’s most widely read daily, Il Corriere della Sera, just launched 30 books of poetry, setting its spotlight on Eugenio Montale in the first volume. A public reading of his poetry last week drew a crowd that filled the 600-seat Grassi theater in Milan. Look for this phenomenon to grow as weeklies like Panorama and Famiglia Cristiana get in on the action.
It wasn’t a newsstand but a bench at the train station in Bielefeld where German author, literary critic, and former TV personality Roger Willemsen was approached by the artistic director of an orchestra who hoped to recruit him to pen a story based on the classic Camille Saint-Saëns piece, Carnival of the Animals. Willemsen agreed and asked his friend Volker Kriegel, a multi-talented jazz guitarist and author, to illustrate the book. (Sadly, this was Kriegel’s last work before he died in June 2003.) This Aesopian menagerie, including snails who wear lipgloss and rats who jump out of cakes, provides a witty picture of animals as they reflect the oddities of human beings. The book received an added boost when Elke Heidenreich featured it on her hit series Lesen! (see PT, 8/03). Rights have been sold to Korea (Haeto). US and UK rights for this book and his previous book Travel Through Germany are still open. Contact Isabell Ludewig at Eichborn in Germany.
Finally, stay tuned for our Japanese list next month, but in the meantime, check out A Real Novel by Minae Mizumura. Hailed as the contemporary Japanese version of Wuthering Heights, the two-volume epic has been called a “decisive moment in the history of Japanese literature” which describes Japan from its prewar social structure, to a “middle-class vapidness” in the 50 years following World War II. With a complex narrative structure (in which Mizumura takes part in the plot), the book presents the author’s life in the US and her numerous encounters with Taro Azuma, the central character in the novel itself. Years later, when the author, now a middle-aged novelist teaching at Stanford University, has lost touch with Taro, she is visited by a young editor wanting to hear the story of Taro’s life in Japan. Thus begins the story of how the young editor came to hear Taro’s story from a woman he once met. Got it? The book has been sold to Seuil (France), but US rights are still available. Contact Writers House.
