A troubled teacher tries to find the right path for himself and the world in a novel with a big heart.
Author: Satu Taskinen
Finnish original: Lapset
Publisher: Teos, 2017
Number of pages: 296 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample
Rights sold: Austria, Residenz
The course of the day should be clear. After work, Navid leaves the classroom, buys a gift and a card for his grandchild, and makes his way to the birthday party.
But Navid isn’t feeling very well at all for some reason. He’s troubled by the absence of his wife Sara, and his thoughts keep going around in ever bigger circles. The world around him is really the one that’s spinning: Europe is shaking in its foundations, and inequality is growing everywhere.
Amidst these changes, and with the megalomania of a preacher, Navid is trying to move things in the right direction and find the best possible way to save what people can save together.
“The form of Taskinen’s novel is close to the architecture of Thomas Bernhard’s works. Also Taskinen’s story twines. It is intendedly repetitious, self-complementing, and its paragraphs can go on for dozens of pages. […] Taskinen makes observations that often are so sharp that they hurt. […] Satu Taskinen is with this book, if not before, risen pretty high up on the ranking list of Finnish fiction.”
– Helsingin Sanomat newspaper
Also available:
Cathedral (Katedraali, 2014)
The Perfect Steak (Täydellinen paisti, 2011)
About the author:
Satu Taskinen