The Finlandia Prize-winning novel Destruction by Iida Rauma has been acquired by one of Hungary’s most prestigeous literary publishing houses, Magvető.
Destruction by Iida Rauma quickly caught critics’ and readers’ attention when it came out in 2022 thanks to its combination of a strong and captivating literary voice, an impressive thematic depth and the ability to bring to the fore a social issue often overlooked: how children are treated in society. In Destruction, Rauma turns the spotlight onto violence in schools, but builds the theme into even bigger issues: how the strong tend always to exercise their power on the weaker ones. According to Turun Sanomat newspaper, the novel is “a dazzling demonstration of art’s potential to expose societal structures”.
Magvető is one of Hungary’s most prestigious publishing houses. It is the home of Imre Kertész, the only Hungarian laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and of László Krasznahorkai, the only Hungarian winner of the International Man Booker Prize. It is also the publisher of authors such as César Aira, Michel Houellebecq, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Gabriel García Márquez and Lyudmila Ulitskaya.
Destruction is Rauma’s third novel, preceded by The Book of Disappearances and On Sex and Mathematics. It has been previously sold to Rámus in Sweden – the Swedish edition will be published soon – and to Jensen & Dalgaard in Denmark.