Final Harry Potter book appears in Finnish translation

Queues outside bookstore at midnight

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The last book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - was released in its Finnish edition from midnight on Friday morning, prompting the usual scenes of queues outside bookstores that had elected to open for the event.
      The first fans had turned up in front of one bookstore on Helsinki’s Lönnrotinkatu already on Thursday morning, suitably attired in wizard garb.
      The bookshop - Suuri Kuu - began selling the books on the stroke of midnight, while the other large booksellers in the capital elected this time to open their doors from 7 a.m.
     
"I have to get the book straightaway" , offered 15-year-old Laura Kurki and 16-year-old Elli Kapanen as the reason for their lengthy wait. "It doesn’t matter that I have read the book already, in English."
      The same went for Kari Jokinen, sporting a dapper wizard’s hat somewhat further down the line of around 200 people - even though Jokinen could at least in terms of years have been the father of the two girls.
      “When you have started on a game like this, you have to see it through to the end.”
      Jokinen is no stranger to queueing up for things. In 1986 he was in line of one of the fiercely sought-after boat mooring places in Espoo, when the first takers were in position days before anything actually started to happen.
     
Published by Tammi, Harry Potter ja kuoleman varjelukset, to give the work its Finnish title, appears today in a record-breaking first run of 180,000 copies.
      The edition is larger than the previous first Finnish-language editions of Potter books. The sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, had a first print-run of 140,000 copies in its Finnish edition.
      The phenomenally successful series has been translated into 64 languages, and has spawned a parallel series of blockbuster films.
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Harry Potter made fans queue all night long (16.3.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat