Category: Uncategorized

Hopelessness by Susanna Hast has been nominated for the prestigious Runeberg Prize

Wonderful news: Hopelessness by Susanna Hast has been nominated for the prestigious Runeberg Prize, the second largest literary prize in the country.

The prize, established in 1986, is awarded on a yearly basis to a literary work of fiction and a children’s book on Runeberg Day, February 5^th, by the newspaper Uusimaa and the city of Porvoo and amounts to 20.000 euros per category.

The nominees are chosen by a jury that includes three literary professionals. This year it was author Essi Kummu, editor and critic Maaria Ylikangas, and critic and literary scholar Daniel Wickström Grönroos.

They have motivated their nomination of Hopelessness as follows: “The narrator of Susanna Hast’s Hopelessness lies down in a cold, empty bathtub and starts to pinpoint a vague, paralyzing emotional pain. Helplessness is at the same time a most unpleasant and a most rewarding reading experience. It is trauma literature marked by the compulsion to repeat – brave in its theoreticality and artistically resolute. The world of Hopelessness opens into a world of horror. The narrator approaches her avoidant mother like a bomb squad. When it comes to trauma, the unsaid looks for a new hiding place. “Anything fits in that container, and nothing does”. Helplessness refuses to give solutions, climaxes or to free the reader into the world outside the text unscathed. What political action this act is charged with.”

Hopelessness explores maternal rejection, diving deep into the subconscious and showing the institution of family and the concepts that hold it together – inheritance, gift, father, mother – in a merciless light. The work approaches the internal violence of intimate relationships, the necessity of separation and the horror of duality. It is a novel that stings from beginning to end.

Susanna Hast works as a researcher and Associate Professor at Uniarts university in Helsinki. She has researched war, compassion and corporality. Her debut novel Body of Evidence was awarded the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for the best debut of the year in 2022. Hopelessness is her second novel.

Both her novels are published in Finland by Kustantamo S&S.

Warmest congratulations to the author and the publisher!

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!

Polar has secured the Hungarian rights to He Who Saw The Deep by Selja Ahava, marking the third foreign deal for this title.

He Who Saw The Deep by Selja Ahava is continuing its journey out into the world: Polar has secured the Hungarian rights, marking the third foreign deal for this title, already sold to Denmark and Poland.

He Who Saw the Deep follows Liisa, a middle-aged woman from a family where reaching old age is the exception rather than the rule, who has met her partner later in life and is haunted by the fear of death. As her only older living relative falls deathly ill, she decides to cope with the fear and the creeping sense of loss the way she knows best: by writing a story. The stories follow situations where the line between life and death, the dead and the living, is walked, observed, and redrawn. The fragments of stories are weaved together, resulting in a modern rhapsody held together by Liisa’s own story. Touching and deeply vulnerable, He Who Saw the Deep focuses on two of the most quintessentially human qualities: mortality, and the ability to love.

Selja Ahava is a much-loved Finnish author with beautiful, poetic language. Her 2015 novel Things That Fall From the Sky won the European Union Literature Prize, and her work has been translated into 28 languages. He Who Saw the Deep is her fifth novel, published in Finland by Gummerus.

Polar is a Hungarian publishing house whose list includes a broad selection of Finnish literature: they are the Hungarian publisher of, among others, Liv! by Helmi Kekkonen, The Bee Pavillion by Leena Krohn, and a few of Ahava’s previous titles.

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

The most internationally successful Finnish debut of all times receives exceptional attention in the English-speaking world.

Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea (S&S 2023) has been chosen as the December 2025 book of the month for Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. The Late Show is one of the talk shows of highest standing in the US. Previous book of the month picks include Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, and Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know. Beasts of the Sea is presented to the live audience and the audience at home, and the program culminates in an interview of the author at the end of the month.

The English translation of the book was published in the UK in October 2025 (MacLehose Press) and in the US in November 2025 (Little, Brown). The translation is penned by David Hackston.

This historical novel about the extinct marine mammal Steller’s sea cow has also been noticed on other media platforms across the US. The book was the cover story of the industry magazine Publisher’s Weekly in September 2025, and it is listed among the most-waited literary releases on the Goodreads platform, the Chicago Review of Books journal, The Globe and Mail magazine, the Library Journal and the The Millions literature blog, among others.

In the UK The Guardian published a long interview with the author and The Times has chosen the book as part of its most-waited historical novels list.

The novel has already been published in 18 languages. Its translation rights were acquired globally by large publishing houses with fierce competition on a scale never seen before for a Finnish book and the rights are already sold to 28 language areas. Of the other translations the French edition (Flammarion/Autrement, 2024, translated by Sébastien Cagnoli) was nominated for the best foreign book of the year (Les premières sélections du prix du meilleur livre étranger) and the Italian edition (Neri Pozza, 2024, translated by Nicola Rainò) was shortlisted for the largest literary award in the country, the Premio Strega.

More information:

Urte Liepuoniute, senior literary agent | urte@helsinkiagency.fi | +358 44 244 3996

A Dog Called Cat Says Farewell by Tomi Kontio, illustrated by Elina Warsta, is the winner of this year’s Finlandia Junior Prize.

Wonderful news for our children’s list: A Dog Called Cat Says Farewell by Tomi Kontio has won the Finlandia Junior Prize, the largest and most prestigious literary award in the country for children’s books.

A Dog Called Cat Says Farewell is the last chapter of the much-loved Dog Called Cat series, published in Finland by Teos and masterfully illustrated by Elina Warsta, that follows an unlikely trio of friends:  a dog called Cat, a man called Weasel, and a cat called Dog.

The series explores the themes of accepting difference, seeing people without prejudice, and the importance of looking beyond the surface. The bittersweet, humorous books show life in all its guises. Even those of us with a rougher lot can experience joy and happiness. A Dog Called Cat Says Farewell was published in a different format than the rest of the series, expanding into a short novel for middle-grade readers. In it, Dog and Cat say their farewells to Weasel.

The winner of this year’s Finlandia Junior Prize was chosen by endurance runner Mustafe Muuse, who motivated his choice as follows:

“This work is a prime example of how it is possible to speak gently of big and difficult themes. It deals with friendship, letting go, and the melancholy that is an inevitable part of life. The author describes how being different is not an obstacle to connection, but rather its richness. The text is like poetry, but still, it is so clear, that it goes right under your skin. The illustrations complete the world in a way that gives meaning even to small spaces and silent moments. This is a book that I wish every parent will read to their child, young people will find as a story companion, and to which even we adults should stop. Because we all need consolation and understanding.”

Tomi Kontio (b. 1966) is an established poet and author who has received numerous awards for his works. His first children’s book, Wings to the Other Side of the World (2000), won the Finlandia Junior Prize and was awarded the LukuVarkaus Prize by a children’s jury. Kontio’s poetry has been translated into many languages.

Warmest congratulations to the author and the publisher!