Thursday, March 05, 2009

Two new books out next Tuesday


Here's the cover by Jukka Murtosaari to a book I've compiled and written the foreword. The book is a collection of Finnish writer Veikko Hannuniemi's sea-faring short stories, starting from 1939 and ending up in the early seventies. Hannuniemi's stories are full of humour and action, but they are not usual adventure stories. As a sea-farer himself, there's also lots of authentic feel to the stories. The book's title translates as "The Great Hunger" which is title of one of the first stories Hannuniemi wrote. The launch party is next Tuesday at the Raisio municipal library - Hannuniemi lived in Raisio from the 1950's on. He died in 1990.

The book is also an entry in my on-going research into the annals of fiction magazine publishing in Finland: all the stories in the book were first published in various magazines, ranging from Kuluttajain Lehti to Seura and Koti-Posti. Suuri jano is also the newest installation in Turbator's series called m.

I've posted my foreword here. It's in Finnish - understandably.

The next Tuesday will also see another book of mine - the collection of my crime fanzine, Isku's best pieces. The book has stories by Tapani Bagge, Helena Numminen, Petri Salin, Petri Hirvonen, Timo Surkka and other writers - including me. (One of my Joe Novak private eye stories.) I don't have the book's cover at hand as yet, but here's the tentative cover I posted a while back.

6 comments:

Todd Mason said...

Congratulations, Juri...what would be the closest local approximation of western fiction for Finland? Mike Ashley disagrees with my speculation that seagoing fiction is Britain's (though I suppose empire-outpost fiction makes at least a good an analog).

Juri said...

Todd: where did discussion take place? On Fictionmags? I've been on Web Only option for over a week now and will for be some days more.

I think the Finnish equivalent would be the frontier literature, set in Lapland and other non-cultivated areas, though, it's mostly about hunting and camping, not fighting the Saami people.

Todd Mason said...

It was a brief discussion on FM about three-five years back.

Todd Mason said...

And much of the best US western fiction doesn't deal with fighting with native nations people, either...

Juri said...

Yeah, you're right, should've thought before speaking/writing. But there are still many differences between Finnish frontier fiction and western fiction proper.

Todd Mason said...

There's definitely a strong streak of Human v. Nature in westerns and particuarly northerns in the US tradition.