Iida Rauma’s Destruction, the winner of Finlandia Prize 2022, is travelling to the Czech Republic, where the book will be published by Argo. This is the 4th language territory for the title.
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 always tend to exercise their power on the weaker ones.
The book follows A, a young teacher and bullying survivor, whose past catches up with her during a nightly jog around the city of Turku. A familiar figure triggers a series of memories and events that take A on a deep dive into the personal destruction she escaped, into the collective destruction suffered by her city in the past, and the one suffered by our planet’s ecosystem right now.
According to Turun Sanomat newspaper, the novel is “a dazzling demonstration of art’s potential to expose societal structures”.
Destruction has been previously sold to Rámus in Sweden – where the Swedish edition was received with rave reviews and extensive coverage – to Jensen & Dalgaard in Denmark and to Magvető in Hungary. In Finland, it is published by Siltala.
Argo is a major Czech publisher with a broad selection of high-quality domestic and international fiction. They are the Czech publisher of, among others, Umberto Eco, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leïla Slimani, Margaret Atwood, Peter Høeg and Sally Rooney.
Warm congratulations to the author and the publisher!
