The British edition of Backlight by Pirkko Saisio (Helsinki Trilogy #2) has landed a glowing review on the Financial Times, penned by Ellen Peirson-Hagger.
The British edition of Backlight by Pirkko Saisio is about to hit the shelves and it has landed a glowing review right out of the gate: Ellen Peirson-Hagger has penned an enthusiastic review of the book on the Financial Times.
In it, she highlights the metatextuality of Saisio’s prose and her ability to build a prose that relies on feelings, rather than chronology, to move forward: “Throughout, Saisio writes as though looking through a haze brought on not simply by the passing of time, but by the understanding that it is our dreams and our preoccupations that point us towards the truth of our lives.”
Backlight is the second volume in the world-famous Helsinki Trilogy, that has made Saisio an instant modern classic across Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic. It follows teenage Saisio as she navigates puberty and spends a summer in Switzerland, studying German and living out her The Sound of Music-fantasies. The summer also brings reflections on her artistic future, and tumultuous events all over Europe. The British edition is out as a Penguin Modern Classic, in English translation by Mia Spangenberg, and hit the shelves on February 5th.
The trilogy, which follows Saisio from childhood to middle age, and from curious child to acclaimed artist on the backdrop of an ever-changing Helsinki, has been pre-empted after we picked it to our list in four areas: in Germany by Klett-Cotta, in France by Robert Laffont, in the Netherlands by De Geus, and most recently in the UK and Commonwealth by Penguin to their Penguin Modern Classics list, with Saisio being the first living Finnish author to join their list. The North American English rights have been acquired by Two Lines Press, in Hungary by Polar, in Czech Republic by Host and in Romania by Pandora M (of Editura Trei).
Congratulations to the author, and don’t miss out on this title!