What a summer – Pirkko Saisio’s Helsinki trilogy is on a roll. Vocebianca, Fraktura, and Kitos Knygos have secured the Estonian, Croatian, and Lithuanian rights, marking 13 foreign language areas. The Helsinki trilogy made Saisio the first living Finnish author to be included in the Penguin Modern Classics.
Pirkko Saisio’s iconic Helsinki Trilogy continues its journey into the world: Voce bianca and Fraktura have secured the Estonian and Croatian rights respectively, and Kitos knygos has acquired the Lithuanian rights to the third volume of the trilogy, The Red Book of Farewells. This marks 13 foreign language territories for the trilogy so far.
Pirkko Saisio is the grand dame of the Finnish literary and dramatic scene and her Helsinki Trilogy consists of The Lowest Common Multiple, The Backlight, and The Red Book of Farewells. The Helsinki Trilogy is an autofictional trilogy that carries the reader through the childhood, adolescence and adulthood of a girl who wanted to be a boy and started calling herself “her” when she was eight years of age.
The trilogy starts with The Lowest Common Multiple (1998). In the beginning of the novel, the main character, “she”, is already a middle-aged mother. When her father dies, things get shoved o their place. Her memories take her back to her childhood in the 1950s – to a story, which is also about to change. The following novels, The Backlight (2000) and The Red Book of Farewells (2003) deal with the author’s adolescence and coming-of-age, personally and artistically.
The strong themes of the trilogy – the relationship between an individual and the society, sexuality and being queer, and finding your voice – are told in a fragmentary, lyrical style, descriptive of Saisio. As the background, there is Helsinki, changing as the decades go by.
The trilogy made history in January 2024 when Penguin acquired it in a three-book deal which has made Saisio the first living Finnish author to be included in the Penguin Modern Classics. The trilogy is also out in German with Klett-Cotta, in French with Robert Laffont and will be a top title on its release with Host in Czech and De Geus in Dutch.
Vocebianca is a new independent publishing house based in Tartu, a UNESCO City of Literature and an ancient university city. The publisher aims at focusing on novels, essays, and poetry with “good spirit and spark”. The ambition and originality shows equally in all levels of a book’s production. For instance, in 2024, Vocebianca published a Lithuanian classic Vilnius Poker, by Ričardas Gavelis, with 52 different cover designs – as many as there are cards in a poker game.
Fraktura is an established Croatian publishing house whose list boasts a selection of international literary voices including Olga Tokarczuk, Sofi Oksanen, Leïla Slimani, Douglas Stuart, Antonio Scurati and Paolo Cognetti.
Kitos knygos is an esteemed independent Lithuanian publishing house known for its bold and thought-provoking contributions to literature, poetry, culture, and political discourse. They are the Lithuanian home of, among others, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, and Naomi Klein.
Congratulations to the author and the publishers!