Reviews

This collection of short stories, awarded the Yle literary prize, comprises a series of portraits set in the 1950s–80s, and many of the characters are Finnish parents still suffering from the after-effects of the wars with Russia, or the next generation reared by such parents.

One of the Nordic region’s most interesting writers of youth fiction.

Fagerholm does not tell a story as much as evoke a world.

The jacket blurb of this spare but unsettling novella pointedly asks: what happened?

An atmospheric novel set on the fictional island of Ör, off Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s native Åland Islands, finds this seasoned and much-lauded writer on top form.

A Gothic celebration of the city in the form of a vampire novel.

The year is 2035...

Each of the 32 poems in this little volume could have an explication devoted to it.

As in the best fantasy novels, the possibility of unknowable forces on the very fringe of our perceivable reality lends depth and tension to Korkea-aho’s novel.

A shadowy, treacherous epoch, when Europe stood on the brink of war and a dark cloud of fear and intrigue – both personal and political – hung over the continent like an impending plague of locusts.

Söderlind has taken her inspiration from a dark but horrifyingly real chapter in the history of Ångermanland. The plot revolves around Stake Mountain, a hill on which 71 local women, sentenced to death for witchcraft, were beheaded and burnt in the 1670s.

Illustrated in rich swathes of violets, purples and blues, this picture book aims to help young children come to terms with fear of shadows and the dark.

‘Madness’ is not just an idea, but rather the essence of the book.

The quiet underdog with hidden qualities, a loser suddenly finding that he or she can make a difference in a situation where former tormentors now have to rely on him or her.

‘Judaism is a humanity unto itself – as diverse and heterogeneous as all of humanity on our planet.’

She discovers that there is blood on her dress, but she is having her period, so perhaps that is the reason? Still, she hides the dress in her closet. The bodies of her parents are found, and she is arrested.

The butterfly effect of the title is the scientific theory that a single occurrence, no matter how tiny, can change the course of the universe forever.

The influence of English crime fiction on Maria Lang’s novels is obvious: the closed circle of suspects, suspense, and the solution reached through use of the little grey cells with pipe-smoking as inducement to concentration.