There are lots of good and even excellent novels. But really stunning, exceptional novels are rare. Purge (original title Puhdistus), written by Finnish-Estonian playwright, novelist, and activist Sofi Oksanen, a writer mostly unknown in the English-speaking world, is such a novel. Purge is her third novel, and has received a lot of well-deserved attention. With this book, Oksanen (born 1977) was the first ever writer to win both of Finland’s prestigious literary prizes—the Finlandia and the Runeberg. Then this marvelous piece of writing went on to win the Nordic Council Literature Prize as well.

Purge is mostly quiet and almost laconic in its tone. In a subdued fashion it tells the stories of the lives of two seemingly unrelated women in Estonia over a span of more than forty years. A major part of the story is about the elderly and isolated Aliide Truu who has lived her whole adult life in an Estonia that was part of the Soviet Union; an Estonia dominated by the Communist party where neighbors and colleagues spied on one another. Another part of the story is about the young Zara – a victim of sex trafficking in the West who has escaped her captors.

Under the quiet surface of the language Oksanen has adopted for the book vibrates a world full of tensions, secrets, shame and tragedies. Aliide, like so many other women in countries dominated by males with unchecked power, has lived a life full of trials and struggle. Yet it is not the hardships she has suffered that make the strongest impression in this book: It is rather the consequences of living under the kind of strain she has experienced – her willingness to sacrifice, her stunning ability to go on, and the role and importance of love and hope in exceptionally miserable conditions.

And therein lays the stunning power of this novel: gradually, as the amazingly composed story in Purge – moving back and forth in time and space like a multidimensional jigsaw-puzzle – lifts the veil and lets the stories behind the stories be revealed the story changes and becomes somehow grander and deeper. And more and more it becomes a story of how the fear, due to the uncontrolled and almost limitless power over destinies that the Communist party had, through decades of debasement, have permeated society and twisted minds in the former USSR. Behind the stories of rape, sexual abuse and violence are the stories of shame: shameful revelations and repellent intimacies. And stories of never-ending fights for dignity.

Purge is one of the best novels I have read in a very long time. It starts a little bit slow, but as the stories under, beneath and beyond begin to reveal themselves, the text is transformed into a strange, fascinating, multi-layered landscape, rich and in some ways so ugly that it becomes spell-binding. I consider this book to be a powerful masterpiece, one of the best novels of the decade!

Links to books by Sofi Oksanen at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

“A bravura work, deeply engaged with [Estonia’s] knotted history, sparing but potent in its use of irony, and containing an empathic treatment of all the miserable choices Estonians faced during their periods of oppression. . . . Oksanen has crafted a stirring and humane work of art.”—Jacob Silverman, The New Republic

“Purge is that very rare thing, a sheer masterpiece . . . A marvel . . . I hope that everyone in the world who knows how to read, reads Purge.”–Nancy Huston, author of Fault Lines

“[A] bold combination of history, politics, and suspense.”—Sunday Times (UK)

“Purge is a breathtaking novel dense with emotion that snares the reader from the very first pages. . . . Moving and horrifying, it leaves you shuddering and gasping for breath.”—Ilkka (Finland)

“The multidimensionality of Purge is startling. . . . [The novel] encompasses the grand themes . . . [of] shame, betrayal, guilt, atonement . . . with the complexity and seriousness worthy of them.”—Turun Sanomat (Finland)

“The first chapter of Purge displays the most condensed, metaphorically effective language I have read in a long time. . . . Oksanen’s beautiful prose breaks the silence of the shame and guilt of oppression,”—Aftonbladet (Sweden)

The Summer Book is a real genuine feel-good book. It has been excellently translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal. It tells the story of an old woman who spends the summers on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland with her six-year-old granddaughter. They enjoy being together; have some kind of understanding of one another. They live a plain, ordinary life, and do what ordinary people do in Scandinavia when they areat their cabins by the sea. So the story is very recognizable and feels very authentic. They wander around, look at things, pick flowers, watch storms, take an occasional trip in a rowing boat to a neighboring island, watch the cat, and do ordinary things.

However, in all they do, all the ordinary observations, there are deeper truths, larger contexts, and more to be understood. And somehow those larger truths, that wider perspective quietly emerges in this delicious book by Tove Jansson. It is not a book that preaches, not a book that teaches – just a book that tells a quiet tale in a delightful way and at the same time, almost unnoticed, reveals the significance of what is happening in a light, sweet and tender manner.

This, of course, is Finnish Tove Jansson’s special talent and quality, this is exactly what has made her Moomin children’s books what they are – something more than just sweet stories, stories, perhaps, with a deeper meaning.

The book is full of wisdom, imparted by a wise old lady to a member of the younger generation. Coming across a sign saying “NO TRESPASSING” on a nearby island, the grandmother tells her grandchild: “No well-bred person goes ashore on someone else’s island when there’s no one home. But if they put up a sign, then you do it anyway, because it’s a slap in the face.”
Jansson is an excellent writer and tells her stories in a straight-forward and simple manner. Even so, they are stories deserving of considerable pondering and reflection. They contain wisdom, and at times perhaps the wisdom of an age that is disappearing as we speak – but even so, knowledge very deserving of some careful consideration. I loved this book, so full of superb descriptions, and rich with everyday philosophy, beautifully and quietly told, and gently filled with compelling food for thought. The Summer Book is a little treasure!

“Poetic understatement, dry humor and a deep love for nature are obvious throughout her oeuvre…. The book is as lovely, as evocative as a film by Hayao Miyazaki.” –Time Out New York

“A wise, joyous book…it unfolds the knowledge and the beauty of the two lives it embraces–old wisdom and young discover, intertwining like vines.” –Rex Reed

“A…beautiful novel which blends humour and poetry with detailed observation of tiny things.” –Daily Mail (London)

“Every so often, a book is published that captures something in us…The Summer Book is one of those.” –Daily Telegraph

“The Summer Book is beautiful and warm, with the kind of wisdom we can adapt to our everyday lives.” -Liv Ullmann

Links to Tove Jansson’s books at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

Finnish author Arto Paasilinna is a very productive author and very popular in Finland, and his books have been widely translated (only 2 into English, however). His novels are fast-paced, light and very humorous in style, and several are adventuresqe stories with a satirical angle, modern fables almost. The Year of the Hare belongs to this category. It is a strange, lovely, imaginative novel about an ex-journalist who is disgusted by the emptiness and meaninglessness of modern consumer society, and therefore sets out on a quest for “authentic life”. Which – as we all know – is something you find deep in the Finnish backwoods?

The main character is Kaarlo Vatanen. While driving on a country road, he hits a hare. Leaving his car and a colleague sitting within, Vatanen goes chasing the hare, finds it, and in a fit of guilt he decides to take to the wilds of Finland with the hare for company.

And what a journey he makes! There are strange adventures, unlikely events, and disasters aplenty in this book: arrest for possession of a hare; lots of heavy drinking; and a bear hunt; a chase into the Soviet Union, prison, and more. One wild and hilarious story follows another! The adventures show Vatanen and the hare much about the world they live in – about people’s avarice, about lacking humaneness, hypocrisy, cruelty, the evils of bureaucracy, and how many merely exist rather than live. It is a cruel awakening for Vatanen.

This a fabulously weird novel – somewhat like the remarkable Aleksis Kivi novel Seven Brothers, but an adventure of the kind you would probably expect to find in a Latin American novel, written by authors such as García Márquez or Paulo Coelho, rather than in a Finnish novel written in a very low-key, minimalist, factual style. The Year of the Hare is a book about a middle aged man’s crisis, a tale of breaking lose, about freedom, about the importance of happiness, and a tale of a wonderful, different, original adventure. The book is a little slow in the start, but it very soon picks up. A light, very enjoyable and very interesting read!

Links to books by Arto Paasilinna at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

The Stone Murders, to my knowledge the first book by Finnish writer Matti Joensuu published in English, has been expertly translated by Raili Taylor. Joensuu writes police procedurals featuring detective Harjunpaa. His books are written in a spare, austere language which sometimes feels a little stiff.

The Stone Murders refer to just that – first one and then another murder in Helsinki where the victims are killed by stones. Very soon the police and detective Harjunpaa zooms in on youths hanging around in the area where the murders have been committed. Harjunpaa himself learns firsthand what it means to be surrounded by and harassed by rioting, pleasure seeking and teenagers totally lacking respect even for the police.

As readers, we know more than the police, and also follow two youngsters, both living sad – terrifying is perhaps a better description – lives, running away and getting drunk when they can, and getting into trouble more or less because they can and because it is something to do. We know they are the murderers and we know why. But will the police find then?

I found the book to be very interesting, not only for the mystery but also because it provides a somewhat shocking perspective on Finland’s youth problem (it may not be all that different in Germany, the UK and the US, by the way). The book really tells a shocking tale, not only of brutal murders but also of a segment of a generation with seemingly no future. Even so, the story ends on a note of hope. The Stone Murders is a good book I am happy to recommend!

Links to books by Matti Joensuu at amazon US and amazon UK.

Jarkko Sipila is a Finnish journalist / author, and one of the most read crime fiction authors in Finland. He is 45 years old. He has been reporting Finnish crime news for MTV3 TV News and the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper for almost 20 years. He has written 11 crime novels. Some of his books have been translated into German, but this is the first translated into English. Against the Wall (Finnish title Vasten seinää) – the 2009 Winner of the Best Finnish Crime Novel – has been translated excellently by Peter Ylitalo Leppa. The language used flows nicely and underscores the style of the novel. The sentences are short and to the point.

Sipila’s style is somewhat noir and hard boiled. His writing is direct with little commentary. He has good knowledge about modern police methods and the stresses of police work.

The main character in Sipila’s books is Lieutenant Detective Kari Takamaki. He is the head of the Helsinki Police Violent Crimes Unit. He is professional and team oriented in his work. In this book, most of the police work is done by on e of his team members, the undercover policeman Suhonen, who goes undercover using the name Suikkanen and posing as a hardened criminal.

The action in the book starts immediately. A man is killed by a hitman. Later, in an abandoned house in Northern Helsinki, his dead body is found in the garage by the police. Detective Lieutenant Kari Takamäki’s homicide team gets the case from a snitch that reports it to Suhonen. The case has all the markings of a professional hit. Even so, some traces are found at the murder site. And clearly the police informant knows more than he has told the police.

The book describes a hard and tough underworld in Finland, with organized crime, gangs, and connections to the Russian underground. The story moves in a world of gangsters, prisons, snitches, corrupt officials, undercover police and hardworking detectives.

Against the Wall is very well plotted. It is written is a slow-moving and direct style. Pieces of the puzzle and the larger plot become visible gradually, and this serves to build the excitement towards a plausible and interesting ending. As well, the characters, while not being fully drawn, are realistic and very interesting. I enjoyed reading it, and strongly recommend it.

Links to books by Jarkko Sipila at amazon US and amazon UK.