More than 30 Swedish authors to attend Helsinki book Fair

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Sweden is the theme at this year’s Helsinki Book Fair, marking the bicentennial of the events of 1809, when Sweden lost its hold on Finland, which became an autonomous part of the Russian empire.
     At the fair, which begins on Thursday this week, Sweden will have a separate area at the Helsinki Fair Centre, covering nearly 200 square metres, with 27 exhibitors, publishers, and communities.
     During the four days of the fair, more than 30 Swedish fiction and non-fiction writers and other figures will take part in the event.
     
A number of detective story writers, including Leif GW Persson, Jens Lapidus, Inger Frimansson and Johan Theroin will attend the fair.
      The leading Swedish prose writers Ernst Brunner and Per Olov Enquist will also participate, as well as Kjell Östberg, who has written a well-received biography of former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
     
On the last day of the fair, Yrsa Stenius, a Finnish journalist living in Sweden, and Pekka Hyvärinen, the chairman of the Council for Mass Media in Finland, will discuss the latest challenges facing freedom of speech, as well as ethical questions facing the media in Finland and Sweden.
      Finnish and Swedish historians will discuss the significance of 1809 in a seminar on Saturday called “The division of states, which ended when it began”. One of those representing Sweden in the discussion will be Professor Torkel Jansson, who angered Finnish author Merette Mazarella at the Gothenburg Book Fair with views that he expressed on the split between Finland and Sweden.
     He said that although Finland’s joining Russia as an autonomous region brought the construction of a national identity in different directions in Finland and Sweden, the psychological connection between Finland and Sweden remained close, because the seed of the Finnish constitution is in Sweden. “In fact, laws guided Finnish everyday life more than [the national epic], the Kalevala”, Jansson said at a seminar in Gothenburg in September.


Links:
  What´s on, when: Helsinki Book Fair

Helsingin Sanomat