News

Helsinki Literary Agency is extremely happy to welcome a new author on its list: Ann-Christin Antell with her bestselling Cotton Mill trilogy comes as a powerful re-enforcement of HLA’s commercial fiction section.

The trilogy could be described as Bridgerton meets L. M. Montgomery – an entertaining page-turner appropriate for a wide reader base. The top-quality historical romance with feminist undertones is enhanced with a witty female lead, a strong focus on manners and class distinction, as well as reflections on national awakening and rising social and political unrest.

The trilogy began with The Shadow of the Cotton Mill, in 2021, depicting the life of an independent woman in an era when industrialists make up the new elite, women demand equality, and Finland’s status as a nation is undergoing a transformation. The book immediately swept the hearts of the Finnish readers: speedily climbing to bestsellers’ lists, the novel sold close to 40,000 copies in Finland altogether.

The second instalment of the trilogy, Heir to the Cotton Mill (2022), picks up the story in the early 20th century, when Finland’s cultural elite, with their strong sense of nationhood, find themselves at odds with Russia’s increasingly oppressive policies. The book has already sold 20,000 copies in Finland.

The third book, A Rival for the Cotton Mill, is due to be published in 2023.

We already have English sample and synopsis of the first novel, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us (info@helsinkiagency.fi) and ask for more information and materials.

Welcome to HLA, Ann-Christin Antell!

The summer started off fantastically for our children’s authors: only a few days after closing the deal in Italy for Vuokko Hurme’s The Hues series, we are thrilled to announce three more deals!

The deals in question will be enjoyed by Eva Frantz, the author of spooky mystery books for the middle grade readers. Her newest novel The Mystery of Helmersbruk Manor has now been sold to Edizioni EL in Italy and Widnokrąg in Poland. Widnokrąg additionally acquired the Polish rights for Frantz’s previous children’s novel, Queen of the Night.

The Polish rights were sold in auction, handled by our partner Book/Lab Agency.

Widnokrąg is an esteemed children’s publisher, established in 2011. It focuses on quality stories for children and has, among others, been nominated for the London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award in 2017. It is the publisher of Timo Parvela, Kaisa Happonen, Anja Portin and many others.

Edizioni EL is a well-known publishing house specialised in books for children aged 0 to nineteen, and the home of the most important works by Gianni Rodari, the only Italian author ever to be granted the international Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Eva Frantz’s children’s novels have been previously sold to the English World, Denmark, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Russia and Spain.

Congratulations to the authors!

The beginning of summer saw a surge of children’s books sales! While still waiting for the outcome of offers in Italy and Poland for Eva Frantz’s spooky stories for the middle grade readers, we closed another lovely deal: Ruby’s Secret, the first book in Vuokko Hurme’s newest four-part series the Hues, has been sold to Italy.

The publisher of Hurme’s books will be MIMebù, a new children’s imprint in Mimesis Group based in Milan.

As all the imprints within the group, MIMebù advocates for free and independent thinking and is determined to publish books that would intrigue and entertain their young readers, as well as encourage them to think.

Ruby’s Secret (2020) is the first instalment in the four-part series about The Hues family, followed by The Many-Coloured Mansion (2021); The Shadow Guest (2022) and The Danger in the Spa of Colours (2022).

This is the first foreign rights sale for the series.

Congratulations to the author!

More wonderful news for our queen of historical fiction, Anneli Kanto, the author of the last year’s sensation The Rat Saint: in the end of May, she was awarded the prestigious Väinö Linna Prize for her lifelong achievements as an author and scriptwriter.

During her career spanning over 15 years, Kanto has written numerous lauded historical novels, as well as children’s books, plays, short stories and TV scripts.

As the award committee has stated, especially Kanto’s novels are “all masterful historical depictions” and her books are always defined by the “proper plot and exhilaratingly rich language”.

Kanto especially rose to national fame last year, with her novel The Rat Saint, which has sold close to 20,000 copies in Finland and has recently been awarded the Blogistania Finlandia Prize and honoured with the Thank You for the Book Prize.

The Väinö Linna Prize is awarded by the City of Tampere. It is given on irregular basis for the achievements in fiction writing. The award sum is 10,000 euros.

Congratulations to the author!

Absolutely fantastic news have reached us from Germany this week: Juhani Karila’s sensation Fishing for the Little Pike, brilliantly translated into German by Maximilian Murmann, made it on the shortlist for the prestigious Internationaler Literaturpreis!

Awarded annually since 2009 by Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Stiftung Elementarteilchen, the prize honors an outstanding work of contemporary international literature that has been translated into German for the first time.

The award is €35,000 (€20,000 for the author and €15,000 for the translator).

The jury has stated about the novel:

Comic relief! This book is so incredibly different, original, funny, heartfelt – and at the same time filled to the last line with precise, eccentric descriptions of nature, but also of a nature that is angry with humans. It confronts us not least in the form of manifold nature spirits: Pejoonis, Hattaras, Rabatze, Stripe Legs, often originating from Lapland myths and fairy tales. At the center of the story is the sympathetic but enigmatic Elina Ylijaako, a forestry graduate and skilled angler, who returns to her remote home village to catch a pike in a mysteriously deep, mosquito-filled pond; the very pike accompanied by a curse. The oddball villagers, including Inspector Janatuinen, have a bit of a Fargo vibe about them; Lars von Trier and David Lynch would have enjoyed this cast of Nordic loners as well as the quirky forest and meadow monsters. A wacky book! A declaration of love to the swampy East Lapland homeland of the author, a literary polemic for a landscape acutely threatened by extinction.

The winner will be announced on the 22nd of June.

Fishing for the Little Pike has been sold to 13 territories worldwide, including the English world.

Maximilian Murmann studied Finno-Ugric languages, general linguistics and German linguistics and received his PhD with a thesis on emotion descriptors in Finnish. He translates from Finnish and Estonian into German, most recently publishing his translations of the graphic novel Between Two Sounds by Joonas Sildre and Paavo Matsin’s Gogol’s Disco.

Congratulations for both the author and translator for this incredible recognition!