BACKGROUND: In search of new literary faces
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By Jukka Petäjä
There is one title that won't ever let you down. The Finnish national epic Kalevala remains comfortably the most successful home-grown export item on the literary front.
The nearest anything comes to this 19th century opus, in terms of translations into foreign languages, is Mika Waltari's historical novel Sinuhe egyptiläinen (The Egyptian, 1945), which celebrated a jubilee last year. This, too, beats off the challenge of Arto Paasilinna's back-to-nature picaresque Jäniksen vuosi (The Year of the Hare, 1977, transl. 1995), which is the biggest hit item to emerge in recent years.
The change that has taken place recently can be seen in the fact that foreign publishing houses are looking increasingly to find new blood from Finland, and are no longer blowing the dust off treasures from the archives. They want new books by contemporary writers.
In the last three years, aside from the works of Arto Paasilinna, the three books most prominently on display have been Kari Hotakainen's Juoksuhaudantie (The Trench Road, WSOY, 2002), which has since been made into a film, Johanna Sinisalo's sci-fi novel Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi, (Not Before Sundown, Tammi, 2002), and Kjell Westö's noir thriller Lang, published by Söderström & Co. in 2002.
Hotakainen and Sinisalo have both been translated into Japanese, for instance.
After winning a prize in the United States, Johanna Sinisalo has also got a foot in the door of the extremely closed U.S. market, which is even tougher for works in translation than the British market.
Both Sinisalo and Westö have crossed the publishing threshold in the U.K. There is a significant value-added here: works in print in English or in German often serve as a calling-card for other publishers.
The change has also got the needle on the literary compass turning.
By comparison with the glory-days of eastward "bilateral cultural exchange" in the 1960s and 1970s, the accent on translation of Finnish works has swung around clearly towards the west - the core areas are now Central Europe and the Nordic region.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 7.1.2006
More on this subject:
 Finnish books in translation finding their way onto European shelves
JUKKA PETÄJÄ / Helsingin Sanomat
jukka.petaja@hs.fi
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