Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize goes to doctor-writer Katri Lipson
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This year's Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, awarded to the best first work by a new author, goes to doctor-writer Katri Lipson, whose novel Kosmonautti (The Cosmonaut) describes events in Murmansk on the coast of the Arctic Ocean.
”Literature and art belong to the survival kit of a human being”, claimed the winner at the prize-giving ceremony - proper words from the mouth of a hospital physician.
”It would be absurd to say that such creative skills would have survived in us through evolution unless they are significant regarding the continuity of life”, Lipson said.
Lipson collected the honour and the accompanying EUR 15,000 in prize money at a ceremony in Helsinki on Wednesday, when the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize was awarded for the 14th time.
”The experience of disillusionment is one of the core themes in the Russian classics, and the Finnish updated version of that theme joins ingeniously the long, melancholic, and somehow even comforting tradition”, observed Antti Majander, the chairman of the jury.
Kosmonautti, set in the 1980s as the Soviet Union was beginning to creak at the seams, depicts the inevitable collapse of the illusions of youth and of the official optimism, which happens even if an individual does all he or she can to stave it off.
As many as 70 first works by new writers have been published over the current year, and some of them were really clever, visionary, and noteworthy.
In addition to Lipson’s novel, three other works were included in the short list of candidates, namely an anthology of poems by Lassi Hyvärinen, a novel by Petri Karra, and Antti Nylén’s collection of essays.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 13.11.2008 - TODAY |
 Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize goes to doctor-writer Katri Lipson |
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