Monday, October 26, 2009
Review of Jarkko Sipilä's Against the Wall
Someone called Toby commented on my months old post on Finnish writer Jarkko Sipilä's Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall, the English translation of his cop novel. Here's his review he wrote some time ago - it's not entirely positive, but still merits a look, as he's clearly knowledgeable and mentions having read one of David Peace's crime novels. (I haven't read Sipilä's book myself, so I can't really comment.)
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4 comments:
Thanks for the kind link Juri! I actually only wrote my post yesterday, having bought the book last week. I found your original post about it when Googling to read other reviews, and thought people might be interested to know that it's on sale at Helsinki-Vantaa airport. This seems a like a good place to catch people who have an interest in Finland but don't speak Finnish. Maybe my review is a bit harsh - I was reading Ellroy just before reading Sipilä, and read David Peace straight after, so that's some serious competition to be compared to! Against the Wall is an enjoyable enough read and it will be interesting to see what future things the publishers decide to translate for us English speakers.
cheers
Toby.
Toby, it was actually great to see your review, as I've wanted to spread the word about this book.
Ellroy and Peace sure are serious competition.
I know that Jarkko Sipilä has other plans for books to be translated in English, and I've been slowly (oh so slowly) translating Tapani Bagge's Puhaltaja in English. I'm not sure, though, when I will have enough time to complete it and who will publish it. (It's been a long process.) You can find two of Tapani's stories at the Thrilling Detective site.
There's an effort to get some Finnish SF and fantasy stories translated in English with some European Union money, and I think there are enough interesting Finnish crime stories to be published in English, at least in a webzine (like Tapani's two stories).
Oh, here are the links to Tapani's stories:
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/fiction/05_07.html
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/fiction/08_04_06.html
Thanks for the links! I shall print the stories and read at my leisure. Good luck with your translation project!
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