News

Fantastic news has reached us from Oslo: fourteen Nordic picture books, children’s books and youth novels have been nominated for the 2023 Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize, and two HLA’s titles are on the list. Ellen Strömberg’s YA novel We’ll Just Ride Past is a nominee from Finland, and A Giraffe’s Heart is Unbelievably Large by sisters Sofia and Amanda Chanfreau is a nominee from Åland.

As the Council sums up, this year’s nominees “offer us timeless and life-affirming adventures where diversity is not a message in itself, but a premise that strengthens the credibility of the story”.

The winner will be announced in Oslo on 31 October.

We’ll Just Ride Past, published jointly by Schildts & Söderströms in Finland and Rabén & Sjögren in Sweden, was praised by the jury for its “sincere, believable rendering of the teenage girls’ existence”. The jury has stated:

“Strömberg’s sparkling prose is crystal clear, and Manda’s narrative voice clearly rendered. With impressive confidence, Strömberg captures the high-spirited dreams of the girls’ approaching adolescence, which stand in stark contrast with the prosaic bleakness of their day-to-day life. We’ll Just Ride Past is bursting with life and longing, showing the continued relevance of realist young people’s novels.”

Foreign rights of the novel have been sold to Italy and Korea.

Ellen Strömberg (b. 1987) is an award-winning Finnish-Swedish author who writes for children and young people, as well as for adults. She made her debut in 2018 with the novel Chasing Water (2018). We’ll Just Ride Past, her first young people’s novel, was nominated for the Finlandia Prize for Children’s and Young People’s Literature and won the August Prize for the Swedish Children’s and Young People’s Book of the Year in 2022.

Don’t forget to check out our Literature from Finland podcast episode YOUTH, where Strömberg discussed the novel and writing for young people.

A Giraffe’s Heart is Unbelievably Large, HLA’s hottest title this season, already sold to 10 foreign territories, impressed the jury with timelessness of the adventure and with Amanda Chanfreau’s detailed pencil illustrations, “reminiscent of both the imaginative fairy-tale world of Swedish illustrator Hans Arnold and the whimsical illustrations of picture book creator Sven Nordqvist“. The jury continued:

“The book also hints at Michael Ende’s classic fantasy adventure Den oändliga historien (…). Even as the Chanfreau sisters’ work overflows with imagination, in its text and images you can still recognise Åland and the city of Mariehamn. The illustrations, which offer a bird’s-eye view of the Åland Islands, where the fantasy animal flies on albatrosses, come across as both realistic and magical. The fantasy elements make this a multi-faceted story and pave the way for children and adults to interpret the book in different ways.”

A Giraffe’s Heart won the most prestigious literary award in Finland, Finlandia Prize, in the category of children’s and YA books, and was also nominated for the Runeberg Junior Prize. The title has already sold over 10,000 copies in Finland.

In Finland, the Chanfreau sisters are also published by Schildts & Söderströms.

Congratulations to the authors, and fingers crossed!

Each year, the Finnish Book Art Committee selects the most beautiful books published in Finland during the previous year. One title is awarded as the Year’s Most Beautiful Book, and others, organised according to their categories, receive honorary mentions.

We are happy to share that two books from HLA’s list have been selected among the year’s most beautiful books. 101 Ways to Kill Your Husband, written by the author duo Laura Lindstedt & Sinikka Vuola, received an honorary mention in the fiction category, and Skeleton, written by Malin Klingenberg and illustrated by Maria Sann, was among the selected in the category of children’s & YA books.

101 Ways to Kill Your Husband is an Oulipo-inspired murder mystery, published in 2022 by Siltala. The title is a result of experimentations with form and language, as well as strong interest in feminist issues – themes that have been a high priority for both authors throughout their respective careers. A literary piece of sheer joy and fascination for readers, writers and translators alike, 101 Ways… has definitely caught the attention of the Finnish and foreign audiences alike.

The French rights have been sold to Gallimard; moreover, our Literature from Finland podcast episode EXPERIMENT, where authors discussed the title, has been among the most popular this season!

The book begins with a real-life story: in October 1981, Anja B. from Finland took a shotgun to her Norwegian husband Thorvald’s chest and fired. He died immediately. On the 5th of May 1983 history was made as the District Court of Oslo not only released her from the murder charges but found her late husband guilty because of the physical abuse he had inflicted on her for years.

In the title, the case has shapeshifted to 101 variations, written using different methods and various narrative styles that are in turn witty, surprising, touching, skilful, or garnished with a dose of gallows humour.

Skeleton is a new picture book by the beloved children’s author Malin Klingenberg, who made her name abroad with her successful and cheeky book The Secret Life of Farts (2019).

Skeleton, on its part, is a tenderly told story about a child overcoming his fears while learning what each of us is made of.

When a host of a costume party shows up as a skeleton, Teo cannot think of anything scarier. But when Teo trips over and breaks a bone, it turns out, he too, has a skeleton inside him! He is frightened, but quickly learns that sometimes, parts of us break and need to be fixed with a cast.

Congratulations to all the authors and their book designers!

Lovely news from our neighbouring Sweden: author Karin Erlandsson is now nominated for the Radio Sweden Short Story Prize (Sveriges Radios Novellpris)!

The prize is a part of the traditional Literature Week, organised by the Sweden’s National Broadcaster. In addition to a short story, a novel and a poetry work are awarded during the event crowning the Literature Week.

In Erlandsson’s category, 5 short stories written in Swedish have been nominated, and the winner will be announced on the 26th of April. Erlandsson is nominated for the short story Lådan.

The winner is voted by the public, and you can cast your vote here.

Karin Erlandsson is a Swedish-writing author who lives on Åland Islands. She writes both for children and adults, and has been nominated four times for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Her newest work is a narrative nonfiction Blue Yarn. What I know About Knitting, already sold to three territories, including to Blanvalet in Germany.

Congratulations to the author for the nomination, and fingers crossed!

Each year, Finnish bloggers, bookstagrammers and booktubers organize their own voting and choose the best book of the year. The clear favourite in the category of the Finnish fiction was Destruction, by Iida Rauma.

There were 50 voters this year, who could only vote for the books that they have written about in their blogs or Instagram posts, or discussed on their Youtube channels. Each voter can give points 3, 2 and 1 to three books respectively.

The award is given in four categories:
Finlandia – for a fiction book published in Finland;
Globalia – for a translated fiction book;
Tieto – for a nonfiction book;
Kuopus – for a children’s or YA book.

The voters have shared their impressions on Destruction:

“Destruction is a ferocious and impressive book.”
– Kirjavinkit book blog

“Shocking, terrifying, intoxicating, scary. Also, horrible, penetrating, unbelievable, brilliant, abundant, astonishing and apt.”
– @kalmanoudotkirjat

“Destruction is a work of fiction of the highest standard. [The author] is skilful in structural and narrative solutions, and the book has a beautiful language.”
– Kirsin Book Club blog

The winner of Finlandia Prize in 2022, and now a nominee for the EU Prize of Literature, Destruction asks how one can write about oneself if one’s own self has been shattered.

While jogging at night, A sees a familiar figure at the city’s desolate fringes and realizes nothing ends, nothing is over. So begins a breathless, desperate attempt to hunt down and escape the past across the ravaged city of Turku, into the water-damaged classrooms of the 1990s and a darkness for which there are no words but still must be expressed.

How can we document the horrors of one’s childhood in a culture where adults hate children and want to erase the traces of past wrongs?

Destruction succeeds at the impossible. The furious urge to remember, a love for the marvelous history of a burned and demolished city as well as pain that strikes at the core are woven into a stunning tableau of violence, its rings spreading out to the ends of the earth. The novel demonstrates the ability of literature to tell the truth when all other ways of speaking have been denied or condemned as lunacy.

The novel has already sold over 30,000 copies in Finland, and foreign rights have been sold to Sweden (Rámus). Rauma’s publisher in Finland is Siltala.

Congratulations to the author!

It’s always such a joy and excitement to introduce a new author to the audiences abroad. And so, we are thrilled to share that the first foreign rights deal has been made for Anna Englund’s debut novel Pine Coat: Estonian rights have been acquired by Ühinenud ajakirjad.

Ühinenud ajakirjad has proved to be a loyal fan of Finnish literature, publishing many adult and children’s titles over the recent years – among others, the Finlandia Prize winner Margarita, by Anni Kytömäki; The Dead Still Speak, by R&R; the Finlandia Junior winner Radio Popov, by Anja Portin; The Secret Gardeners, by Maija Hurme & Lina Laurent, as well as many others. The publisher has also recently acquired the Estonian rights for the Finlandia Junior winner A Giraffe’s Heart is Unbelievably Large, by the sister duo Sofia & Amanda Chanfreau, which has quickly become HLA’s most wanted title this season.

Pine Coat is Anna Englund’s highly praised debut novel, which pulses with the rhythms of the 1930s. In it, the protagonist Elena carries on the tradition of coffin-making in a rural village together with her husband. Death is a daily colleague, and life flows along calmly in its familiar channels.

But when a strange woman from the capital arrives to buy a coffin, everything is thrown into disarray. Love is a force that changes a person, but can one demolish the entire framework of a life in its pursuit?

Pine Coat was nominated for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, given for the best debut of the year.

Congratulations to the author!