“This room wanders through the streets, and the inhabitants within are constantly changing.“
Author: Leena Krohn
Finnish original: Donna Quijote ja muita kaupunkilaisia. Muotokuvia
Publisher: WSOY, 1983
Genre: literary fiction
Number of pages: 82 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English translation
Rights sold: English, Cheeky Frawg Books; French, Esprit Ouvert; Hungarian, Polar
Doña Quixote and Other Citizens: Portraits tells stories of a city in which life is lived under the threat of a great disaster. The reality builds up from a series of portraits, all of which have in their center the mysterious main character, Doña Quixote. Her presence is like a flame that draws the dispossessed of the city to her.
Consisting of miniatures of poetic prose, the collection of stories is a solid whole, bound together by the bold and strange figure of Doña Quixote, who walks through the bustling town with hope and endurance.
Krohn’s fantasy addresses the enigmatic relationship between reality and consciousness and their endless interaction. Her controlled and lucid writing finds its space in the borderland between fact and fiction, between the short story and the novella.
“Doña Quixote, seer more than dreamer, becomes her Virgil in a place whose inhabitants bear names such as The Wader, The Looking-Glass Boy, and The Incurable One. In such a place, Doña Quixote sagely observes, “everyone has to be Hamlet.”
– Kirkus starred review
Also available:
Things I Never Learned (2021)
Perdition (2018)
A Letter to Buddha (2016)
Mistake (2015)
Hotel Sapiens (2013)
Children of the Sun (2011)
False Window (2009)
My Home is Riioraa (2008)
The Bee Pavilion (2006)
Datura (2001)
Mathematical Creatures, or Shared Dreams (1992)
Umbra (1990)
Gold of Ophir (1988
Tainaron (2006 | 1985)
The Pelican’s New Clothes – A Story from the City (1976)
The Green Revolution (1970 | 2020)
About the author:
Leena Krohn