Month: October 2025

Hart has acquired the Slovenian rights to The Silk Road North by Anu Ojala marking the third foreign language for this series.

The Silk Road North by Anu Ojala continues to conquer Europe: Hart has acquired the Slovenian rights, marking the third foreign language for this series, already pre-empted by Droemer Knaur and acquired by De Fontein in a German and Dutch deal respectively.

On the Swedish-Finnish border the twin city of Tornio-Haparanda is in the clutch of a crime wave revolving around a new synthetic drug. As the police fight a helpless battle, Sergeant Ronja Jentzch and her team find unexpected connections between international crime and the drug trafficking ravaging Lapland. As the frozen sea brings deadly substances over to seemingly calm and safe communities, cases of inhumane cruelty, despair-driven crimes, and international meddling become a daily challenge for Jentzsch and her team. Revered by readers, the series brings to light the long-silenced truth about the rise of international drug crime in northern Finland.

Anu Ojala (b.1972) is an author and lawyer living in Rovaniemi in the Finnish Lapland who knows the background of the Arctic drug war well. She has worked in a law firm and at the University of Lapland, and has previously written novels for young readers. Her Silk Road North series consists of three volumes so far: The Silk Road North, Death Knell, and The Skynet.

Hart is a Slovenian publishing house whose list hosts a selection of fiction in translation, quality illustrated non-fiction, and a broad range of literature for children and young adults.

Warm congratulations to the author and the publisher, and don’t miss out on this title!

Jukka Tuhkuri, the author of the captivating and moving narrative non-fiction book Icebound: The Search for Endurance and the Real Reason It Sank , has been in the spotlight of international press this week for his ground-breaking new study proving the real reasons behind the sinking of the legendary ship Endurance.

Contrary to the opinion that has prevailed among experts and general public alike for over a century, Tuhkuri’s study contends that it was the ship itself, not the ice, that led to its demise and eventual sinking. Released on Monday in the journal Polar Record, the new study has attracted wide international attention, with NY Times, CNN, Der Spiegel, among others, reporting on the story.

A polar explorer himself, Tuhkuri was one of 15 scientists who were invited to join the Endurance22 mission, the team that discovered the wreck in 2022. The nonfiction book Icebound: The Search for Endurance and the Real Reason It Sank published in Finland in 2024, focuses on this journey. In addition to that, Tuhkuri retells the Shackleton myth in a new light, and dedicates an entire chapter to exploring Shackleton’s diaries and the real reasons behind Endurance’s sinking.

The book has been warmly received in Finland, with critics praising Tuhkuri’s storytelling, dedication to his subject, and the moving narrative.

“When writing about his own experiences, Tuhkuri produces highly flowing text in which emotions are palpable. Ice, wind, and especially the penguins are described enchantingly. An avid reader, Tuhkuri effortlessly drops references to world literary classics: Moby Dick, the old sailor, Kipling and Dickens find their natural place; and even this Finnish author cannot avoid mentioning Moominpappa when writing about sea”, critic Kimmo Ylönen writes in the Kulttuuritoimutus magazine.

An extensive English sample and synopsis are free upon request, and foreign rights of the book are still available in many territories.

We’re so very happy: author Merja Mäki has received the Pohjalainen Award for her novel Wept Another, the second set in wartime Karelia.

Author Merja Mäki has received the Pohjalainen Award for her novel Wept Another, the second set in wartime Karelia, after the successful Before the Birds. Both titles are published by Gummerus in Finland.

The Pohjalainen Award is given every other year by the Ilkka Pohjalainen newspaper, in collaboration with the Regional Councils of South Ostrobothnia and Ostrobothnia, to the best literary work with connections to the region. The jury have given Wept Another an additional special mention for its beautiful language and the chair of the jury has stated that with Wept Another Merja Mäki “has risen to join the ranks of the great Finnish storytellers”.

Wept Another follows Larja, a young woman from Eastern Karelia. It is 1942, and peace has momentarily descended on this bit of territory recently reclaimed from the Soviets by Finnish troops. Larja has been studying at a teacher training camp and upon her return to her home village she has to come to terms with the fact that nothing is as it was. As Larja cares for her ailing grandmother, she listens to the messages the trees are sending her on the northern winds and discovers that she has the gift of wailing. After a Finnish man steps into her life, Larja finds herself again torn between two different worlds. Wept Another is the story of a young woman who has grown up between two cultures on the border of two countries. It is a tale of roots and the ties that bind us, but above all, of the choices that you must make in life.

Warmest congratulations to the author, and don’t miss out on this title!

He Who Saw The Deep by Selja Ahava is travelling to Denmark, where it will be published by Jensen & Dalgaard, marking the second foreign deal for this title.

Selja Ahava‘s He Who Saw The Deep is on a roll: Jensen & Dalgaard has secured the Danish rights to the title, which has already travelled to Poland.

He Who Saw The Deep is an exploration of two themes central to the human experience: love and mortality. The narrator is Liisa, a middle-aged woman in whose family people tend to die young and who has found love with her husband Henrik later in life.

As Liisa’s only living relative falls deathly ill and Henrik is away, Liisa copes with her fear by writing stories that give her a chance to explore the idea of mortality and the – impossible – pursuit of immortality. The stories follow situations where the line between life and death, the dead and the living, is walked, observed, and redrawn. The structure, in which fragments of myths, stories, and other media are weaved together, results in a modern rhapsody that nods at ancient myths like the Epic of Gilgamesh, that also gives the book its title.

Selja Ahava has established herself as a prominent literary voice in the Finnish scene: her Things That Fall From The Sky won the EU Literature Prize and has been sold to 28 territories, and her production is read with enthusiasm in Finland, where her work are published by Gummerus.

Congratulations to the author and the publisher!