Author Merja Mäki has been awarded the Kauhava Culture Prize by the city of Kauhava for her work.
More accolades are rolling in for author Merja Mäki, who has been awarded the Kauhava Culture Prize by the city of Kauhava for her work.
The Kauhava Culture Prize is awarded by the city of Kauhava on a yearly basis to a person, group or organization whose cultural work has had a special impact, and consists of a sum of 1000 euros. Author Merja Mäki was also recently shortlisted for the Des Racines et des Mots – Prix de la littérature de l’exil in its French edition, out with Léduc/Charleston in translation by Fantine Brunel.
Mäki’s Before the Birds, published in January 2022, became an instant readers’ favourite and won the Torch-bearer Award. The second novel set in the same fictional universe, Wept Another, was welcomed with warm reviews and won the Pohjalainen Award, with the jury stating that with this title Merja Mäki “has risen to join the ranks of the great Finnish storytellers”.
Before the Birds and Wept Another take place in Karelia in wartime, between the late 1930s and 1940s and follow common people looking for their place in the world as their lives are shaken by the war. Mäki has stated that for her writing about war is peacework, and her works strive to portray the impact of conflicts on individual lives, maintaining an exceptional empathy and warmth for her characters despite the somber subjects.
Before the Birds focuses on Alli, a young girl from Karelia who is forced to flee her home during the Winter War when the Soviet army attacks the area. As Alli leaves, she promises herself she will be back soon, before the birds come back the following spring, but destiny has other plans for her.
Wept Another follows Larja, a young teacher from an area long disputed between Finland and the Soviet Union who comes home from a teacher training camp to find her village deeply changed: her grandma is deathly ill, her little sister is carrying a secret, her parents have been taken away to Siberia, and her childhood sweetheart is fighting in the army. As a Finnish man steps into her life, Larja finds herself increasingly divided between two lives and two cultures, and soon learns that love knows no boundaries.
Both books are published in Finland by Gummerus.
Warm congratulations to the author, and don’t miss out on these titles!