Finlandia Prize goes to Sofi Oksanen and portrait of Estonia under Soviet occupation

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This year's Finlandia Prize, Finland's most coveted literary award for fiction, has gone to Sofi Oksanen for her novel Puhdistus ("Purge").
      The winner was selected from a short-list by the former head of Helsingin Sanomat's cultural desk Pekka Tarkka, and the prize carries with it a cheque for EUR 30,000.
     
Sofi Oksanen's novel, which was worked up from an original drama script (the play was a success at the Finnish National Theatre in the spring of last year), deals with the history of 20th century Estonia through the lives of two women of different generations.
      Set in the period immediately after Estonia regained its independence in the early 1990s, it examines the traumas of the long period of Soviet rule and occupation, with a dual narrative straddling past and present.
      The meeting of the two women, with the younger being the granddaughter of the older woman's sister, throws an uncomfortable light on actions many decades earlier in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and yet the central theme of loss of freedom and exploitation of women has a universal relevance, outside of any set time-frame.
     
The book already caused a certain amount of furore earlier this year when Oksanen was briefly dropped from a poetry reading to be held at the Finnish Consulate in St. Petersburg. The action was seen at the time as resulting from the 31-year-old writer's outspoken political views, stemming partly from her own Estonian family background - her mother is Estonian and her father Finnish.
      Protests from several quarters, including a threat by the Finnish PEN to withdraw from the event, produced a change of heart and Oksanen attended the reading.
      Puhdistus is Oksanen's 3rd novel, following on from Stalinin lehmät ("Stalin's Cows", 2003) and Baby Jane (2005), and rights to the work in translation have been sold to 12 countries. Sales in Finland have exceeded 25,000 copies.
     
Oksanen is a colourful figure. Her Goth-like appearance and strong views on sexual violence and foreign policy matters have prompted considerable public interest.
      In particular she has held a mirror up to the Finnish relationship with and attitudes towards Russia, which she argues are complex and have not as yet been properly dealt with, for all that the country boasts of its in-depth knowledge of the eastern neighbours.
     
Whilst she expressed surprise and pleasure at being named as the winner, and commented that it was very positive that such previously hidden stories could now be told legitimately, Oksanen noted that there is still some way to go:
      "I do not like the fact that Russian human rights questions get swept away completely when it comes down to matters of trade. The situation has not changed one iota from the years of Finlandisation or the Cold War. This is a two-faced approach, when one considers the values that the EU and Finland ought to be representing."


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finlandia Prize shortlist does not include Jari Tervo´s Troikka (14.11.2008)
  Sofi Oksanen invited to St. Petersburg poetry evening after all (12.8.2008)

Links:
  Sofi Oksanen (Wikipedia)
  Finlandia Prize (Wikipedia)

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