An anti-story about dreams, compromises, the consumer society and love – narrated with a frenzy and unique mixture of high and low.
Author: Alexandra Salmela
Swedish original: Antisankari
Publisher: Teos, 2015
Genre: literary fiction
Number of pages: 368 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original
Rights sold: Czech Republic, Vetrné Mlýny; Slovakia, Artforum
Utopia is an eco-state where no one consumes or owns anything. KoroNovo is its opposite.
A man called Antti Hero is one of the two hundred Utopia-based orphans who have been given the surname Hero in honour of their parents. He is a press photogra- pher who employs the camera obscura method. He is also a freak of nature – or perhaps not. Can Antti even exist?
When Antti Hero travels to KoroNovo, he is welcomed by media guru Michele Po, also known as the bibulous Tzal, as well as He, the narrator, who carefully monitors Antti’s movements.
Antti travels with a stunning, suspended reporter L. I. Airiainck and Mzeteora, a young woman who keeps a diary and mostly focuses on trees. The legends of the Great Director, who founded Utopia, also have some- thing to do with Antti’s odyssey.
In Antihero, Alexandra Salmela uninhibitedly blasphemes and describes heroism and the world we live in.
“Antihero is at its best a hilariously cutting and mean novel. The author fires a broadside at exploitative capitalism, eco- fascism, the consept of a hero and the ignorance and selfishness of men. […] In the chorus of shouts the reality escapes and there is not a united world anymore.”
– Helsingin Sanomat newspaper
Also available:
The Fantasticle Friend (2019)
Mother Giraffe and Other Silly Adults (2013)
27, or Death Makes an Artist (2010)
About the author:
Alexandra Salmela