Illness not as an ending but an unveiling by Finland’s most celebrated living writer.
Author: Pirkko Saisio
Finnish original: Ilmestyskirja
Publisher: Siltala Publishing, 2026
Genre: Literary fiction
Number of pages: 350 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample, English synopsis
Apocalypse, in the original Greek, means an uncovering. Pirkko Saisio’s narrator falls seriously ill and discovers that the world is not ending – it is only, at last, being revealed.
A serious illness drives the author into extraordinary situations; it casts the world and life as a whole in a new light. The narrator learns that light can be at once gentler and crueller, sadder and more boisterous than she had ever experienced before.
One must adapt to the illness and live with it, yet at the same time the surroundings and the world shimmer with memories and associations that mirror the structures, repetitions and anomalies of the world.
Illness and age reveal ever more clearly the place one has occupied in life: as a link in the chain of past and future generations. Understanding this brings deep joy and delight.
The Book of Revelations utilizes the type of writing we’ve come to expect from Saisio in the Helsinki trilogy: intimate, fragmentary and incisive.
About the author:
Pirkko Saisio