Pirkko Saisio’s Helsinki Trilogy continues its journey into the world: The Red Book of Farewells is travelling to Georgia, where it will be published by Sulakauri.
The Red Book of Farewells, the third volume in the Helsinki Trilogy by Pirkko Saisio, is travelling to Georgia, where it will be published by Sulakauri.
The Red Book of Farewells follows the protagonist as she is approaching adulthood and joins Helsinki Student Theatre, which is forthrightly Communist in attitude. Soon she meets her great love, Havva. These starting points trigger off a series of many farewells to be taken over a long period of time. The Red Book of Farewells describes the discovery of a sexual identity and a vocation as a writer, the political student activism in the 1970s, and intense love affairs. Saisio’s fragmentary and at the same time lyrical style is an integral part of her autofiction, in which tension changes and in which ‘I’ is ‘she’ – both the object of scrutiny and an autonomous actor. The novel was awarded Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize.
The trilogy has quickly established itself as a classic in Finland, and rose to the rank of international phenomenon on the literary scene . After being pre-empted to Dutch, German, French and the UK and Commonwealth, where the trilogy will be published in the Penguin Modern Classics, the Helsinki Trilogy has also been recently sold to the Czech Republik(Host), Hungary (Polar), and Romania (Pandora M). In the USA and Canada, it is published by Two Lines Press.
Sulakauri is a Georgian publishing house with over two decades of experience that publish over 350 titles a year. Sulakauri is a general publisher, known for producing books for all ages and of almost all kinds: fiction and non-fiction, documentary, biography, graphic novel, comic books, books for children and young adults, educational books. Their list of translated titles consists of books from all over the world, and they are currently developing an imprint with classics and modern classics in translation.
Warmest congratulations to the author and the publisher!