Interviews with writers!

We are continuing our creative literary interviews series with HLA’s writers! Piia Leino, the winner of EU Prize for Literature and the Helsinki Metropolitan Library prize, on her newest novel Heaven, societal apathy and why we need dystopian books today. And of course, the entertaining questionnaire! Read the interview here.

(Photo: Mikko Rasila)

State Award for Information Publication to Marcus Rosenlund!

What a wonderful autumn to HLA’s authors! It was announced today that one of our nonfiction highlights, The Weather that Changed the World by Marcus Rosenlund will be honoured with the State Award for Information Publication.

The award is given yearly since 1968. The number of recipients varies every year and nominations are primarily given to fiction and nonfiction books, radio and TV programmes and newspapers articles that had the most significant contribution to the information publication during the previous year. The amount of each award is 15,000 euros, except for the lifelong award (20,000 euros).

The Weather that Changed the World is a true masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. It explains not so much about  how we changed the weather, but rather, how the weather has changed us. Binding connections to our time, Rosenlund shows how the climate has always had impact on historical events – even the ones we thought we were well familiar with. As the author himself has commented: “I wanted to write a book about things people didn’t know they wanted to know”. The result is as informative as it is entertaining, and beloved among the readers: the fourth edition of the book has just reached the Finnish readers, and rights have been sold to four territories: Estonia, (Ühinenud Ajakirjad), Hungary (Cser Kiadó), World Spanish (Elefanta) and most recently, Turkey (Kaplumbaa).

Last year the award was given to another HLA’s writer, Joonas Pörsti for his nonfiction The Enchantment of Propaganda.

Congratulations to the author!