Books Set In Finland: Finnish Novels
This list of books set in Finland, spans from the great Finnish epic poem The Kalevala through to contemporary literary fiction. It includes a wide range of genres, from those considered the Finnish classics, through to modern Nordic noir. These titles span the breadth of the country, with many set in the incredible capital of Helsinki, others set in the countryside and some even crossing beyond the Finnish border. 🇫🇮
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Books Set in Finland: An Introduction
There are many notable classic works by Finnish authors in this list of books set in Finland, including The Maid Silja by Frans Emil Sillanpää (winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature), The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson (the first of many children’s classics), Under the North Star by Väinö Linna (the first in an epic trilogy), The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (a beautiful read and one of my favourites of all time) and The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna.
There are also many notable contemporary works by female authors; including Norma by Sofi Oksanen, The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo, Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta, Compartment No. 6 by Rosa Liksom and True by Riikka Pulkkinen. I hope this list of books set in Finland will transport you to Scandinavia, and inspire you to choose some Finnish novels for your reading pile!
Books Set In Finland: The Shortlist
If I could only choose a handful of books set in Finland from the much longer list below:
- The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, 1972
- The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna, 1975
- The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm, 2004
- The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen, 2005
- House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore, 2006
- Palace of the Snow Queen by Barbara Sjoholm, 2007
- Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendel Vida, 2007
- True by Riikka Pulkkinen, 2010
- My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci, 2014
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Books Set In Finland
1. The Kalevala by Anonymous, 1835 (Poetry)
The Kalevala is the great Finnish epic, which like The Iliad and The Odyssey, grew out of a rich oral tradition with prehistoric roots. During the first millennium of our era, speakers of Uralic languages (those outside the Indo-European group) who had settled in the Baltic region of Karelia, that straddles the border of eastern Finland and north-west Russia, developed an oral poetry that was to last into the nineteenth century. This poetry provided the basis of the Kalevala. It was assembled in the 1840s by the Finnish scholar Elias Lonnrot, who took ‘dictation’ from the performance of a folk singer, in much the same way as our great collections from the past, from Homeric poems to medieval songs and epics, have probably been set down.
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2. Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi, Richard Impola (Translator), 1870
Along with The Kalevala, Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers is Finland’s most celebrated literary treasure. The crowning accomplishment of Finland’s first literary genius, Seven Brothers remains ‘the greatest Finnish novel of all time’, the classic among the classics in Finnish literature. Published in 1870, in the author’s 36th year and two years before his untimely death, Seven Brothers laid the foundation for what Kai Laitinen later called ‘The Great Tradition in Finnish Prose’. This tradition is characterised by realism, humour, respect for the common people, and depiction of nature as both friend and foe.
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3. The Railroad by Juhani Aho, Owen F. Witesman (Translator), Jyrki Nummi (Introduction), 1884
Today, change in our material lives is a constant. Many now living have seen the advent not only of the mobile phone and the Internet, but also of space exploration, vaccines and even indoor plumbing. This in contrast to the world you now enter in The Railroad, where the diminutive Matti and Liisa are ageing in a corner of the world in which peasant life has remained unaltered for centuries. When the iron rails reach the forests of Eastern Finland, however, that solitude and constancy are forever altered. The Railroad was prose writer, poet, translator and journalist Juhani Aho’s first major literary work. There is some disagreement as to whether he or Aleksis Kivi (best known for his 1870 novel Seven Brothers) should be named the first professional Finnish author.
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4. Juha by Juhani Aho, Richard Impola (Translator), 1911
A true classic novel in Finnish literature, Juha was written by Juhani Aho, the uncontested grand old man of Finnish Literature at the turn of the 20th century. Juha has proven to be a timeless, perpetually relevant work of art, a classic triangle drama with Finnish trappings. Juha has inspired several generations of filmmakers; it has been made into film no less than four times. Juha is characterised by deceptively simple yet multilayered language. The translator, the eminent stylist Dr. Richard Impola, captures the depth of emotion and fine nuances in the relationships, in particular between Marja and Juha.
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5. The Maid Silja: The History of the Last Offshoot of an Old Family Tree by Frans Emil Sillanpää, Alexander Matson (Translator), 1931
Note: Sillanpää was the first Finnish author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1939.
The history of the last offshoot of an old family tree, a girl called Silja, who struggles to survive in the agrarian Finland of the first half of the 20th century. The work exudes a deep love for this country and its people. The descriptions of the seasons and nature in particular are rich and picturesque. Sillanpää also beautifully describes the life and young love of a young girl. He has succeeded especially well in perpetuating the warm emotional bond between Silja and her father, Gustav. This classic work is worth reading when the Finnish summer is at its best.
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6. The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson, David McDuff (Translator), 1945 (Children’s)
Note: this is the first book in The Moomins children’s series and these are absolute classics of Finnish literature.
The Moomins and the Great Flood is the first book about the Moomins, originally published in 1945. It´s the story about Moominmamma and Moomintroll´s search for the missing Moominpappa and how they found their way to the Moominvalley.
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7. Unknown Soldiers by Väinö Linna, 1954
Unknown Soldiers follows the fates of a ramshackle troupe of machine-gunners in the Second World War, as they argue, joke, swear, cadge a loaf of bread or a cigarette, combat both boredom and horror in the swamps and pine forests – and discover that war will make or break them. One of Finland’s best-loved books, this gritty and unromantic depiction of battle honours the dogged determination of a country and the bonds of brotherhood forged between men at war, as they fight for their lives.
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8. The Manila Rope by Veijo Meri, 1957
Veijo Meri’s novel is set in Finland during the last years of World War II. On a crowded troop train winding its way through the winter landscape, the home-going soldiers pass their time playing cards, drinking, snoozing, and exchanging stories of the battlefield. It is these stories (constantly interrupted by station stops, the intrusion of the military police, and simple fatigue) that make up the vibrant fabric of the novel. Laughter is the predominant note: the laughter of men newly released from the terror of battle. Though frequently macabre in detail and brutally realistic in its descriptions of men at war, the book is pervaded by a robust sense of comedy that purges combat of all taint of hatred and clearly underlines the essential and tragic ridiculousness of war.
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9. Under the North Star (Under the North Star #1) by Väinö Linna, Richard Impola (Translator), 1959
Linna’s Under the North Star, widely considered the most significant work of Finnish literature published during Finland’s independence, is the first volume of an epic trilogy of the same title. This first part of this historical work, which encompasses Finnish history from the 1880s to the 1950s, depicts the turn of the 20th century (1884-1907). It gives a voice to hitherto silent actors on the stage of history as it offers a comprehensive account of the social and economic realities reflected in the hopes, dreams, and experiences of Jussi and Alma Koskela and their children in the rural village of Pentti’s Corners in south central Finland.
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10. The Uprising (Under the North Star #2) by Väinö Linna, Richard Impola (Translator), 1960
Part two of Linna’s trilogy Under the North Star, entitled The Uprising, is the most powerful novel ever about the 1918 Civil War of Finland, which erupted only a month and a half after Finland’s Declaration of Independence. This part focuses largely upon the fiery eldest of the Koskela sons, Akseli Koskela, who has grown up to become a leader. The social unrest, the class conflict, erupts into a war between Finns, between the haves and the have-nots, even between neighbours. The voices of reason and the voices of hatred are heard clearly in Pentinkulma. The inhumane events of Finland’s Civil War affect Pentinkulma and the Koskelas in dramatic fashion. With deep insight and a strong commitment to truth Linna describes how the victors handled the aftermath of the three-month war, the pseudo-trials, the executions, and the prison camps.
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11. Reconciliation (Under the North Star #3) by Väinö Linna, Richard Impola (Translator), 1962
Reconciliation is the final installment in Linna’s Under the North Star trilogy. In the entire trilogy, the Koskela family serves as the catalyst of the people’s experiences in Finland over three generations. Linna’s insightful social psychological descriptions reaches breath-taking heights in this third volume. This third part is a depiction of the further experiences of the Koskelas during the first decades of Finland’s independence. All three parts reflect Linna’s exceptionally captivating style of writing and psychological understanding of the interaction between individual feelings and social order. Part Three offers a detailed account of the various attitudes toward the social reforms, which were ultimately implemented as a consequence of the Civil War of 1918.
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12. The Most Dangerous Game by Gavin Lyall, 1964
Bill Cary makes a precarious living flying aerial surveys over Lapland. When he’s hired by a wealthy American hunter, Frederick Wells Homer, to fly into a prohibited part of Finland near the Soviet border, the job seems shady indeed, and when a major crook wants him to go on the hunt for Tsarist treasure, things get messy. With thugs and the Finnish Secret Service already on his tail, matters get worse when Homer’s beautiful sister turns up to search for him, and Cary’s fellow bush pilots start getting killed off in a series of suspicious accidents. Cary begins to realise that it may all stem from an incident in his wartime past.
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13. The Parson’s Widow by Marja-Liisa Vartio, 1967
After the publication of The Parson’s Widow, Vartio’s fifth novel, Finnish critics hailed it as a masterpiece, her finest literary achievement. This is the first opportunity for English readers to become acquainted with her unforgettable characters: the eccentric widow of a country parson, her maid Alma, and the other inhabitants of a rural village. Readers will discover the passions that lie beneath the villagers’ reserve and formality, and that from time to time break through the polite surface with devastating results.
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14. Gold Crown Lane (The Sola Trilogy #1) by Irmelin Sandman Lilius, Marianne Helweg (Translator), 1969
The murder of a customs official in a small, late 19th-century Finnish town has many repercussions for the townspeople, especially for the members of the Halter family who become involved with the son of the suspected murderer. Through the three books in the trilogy, the children of the Halter family are caught up in smuggling, alchemy, and greed.. at the end the mysterious appearance of horses from the town’s mythical past.
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15. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, 1972
An elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. Gradually, the two learn to adjust to each other’s fears, whims and yearnings for independence, and a fierce yet understated love emerges – one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the island itself, with its mossy rocks, windswept firs and unpredictable seas. Full of brusque humour and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own experience and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of the novels she wrote for adults. This new edition sees the return of a European literary gem – fresh, authentic and deeply humane.
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16. The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna, 1975
While out on assignment, a journalist hits a hare with his car. This small incident becomes life-changing: he decides to quit his job, leave his wife, sell his possessions, and spend a year wandering the wilds of Finland – with the bunny as his boon companion. What ensues is a series of comic misadventures, as everywhere they go – whether chased up a tree by dogs, or to a formal state dinner, or in pursuit of a bear across the Finnish border with Russia – they leave mayhem (and laughter!) in their wake.
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17. Manrape by Märta Tikkanen, 1975
Please note: trigger warning, this novel and blurb includes descriptions of sexual assault and rape.
On her fortieth birthday Eva Randers, library assistant, divorced, living alone, meets Marty Wester. After a few drinks they go back to his flat, where he proceeds to tie her up, pour liquor over her, and rape her. Eva Randers is stunned. She doesn’t report it to the police. But she can’t and won’t forget it. Slowly, obsessively, she plans her revenge. What follows is bizarre, poignant and hilarious.
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18. The Love Story of the Century by Märta Tikkanen, Stina Katchadourian (Translator), 1978
Hailed an immediate classic of Finnish literature on its publication in 1978 and an international bestseller that has been translated into 19 languages, Märta Tikkanen’s verse novel is a haunting, profoundly evocative portrait of one woman’s fraught relationship with her alcoholic husband, inspired by the author’s own experience. In language that is as delicate as it is fierce, Tikkanen explores the depths of fear and violence that often accompany addiction and the struggle to reconcile that pain with the deep love and strength necessary to hold a family together through it all. As much a story of resilience as it is suffering, The Love Story of the Century is a bittersweet account of the complexities of addiction, the power of creativity, and the redemption of love.
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19. Art in Nature by Tove Jansson, Thomas Teal (Translator), 1978
An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called Art in Nature, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market. A draughtsman’s obsession with drawing locomotives provides a dark twist to a love story. A cartoonist takes over the work of a colleague who has suffered a nervous breakdown only to discover that his own sanity is in danger. In these witty, sharp, often disquieting stories, Tove Jansson reveals the fault-lines in our relationship with art, both as artists and as consumers. Obsession, ambition, and the discouragement of critics are all brought into focus in these wise and cautionary tales.
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20. The Howling Miller by Arto Paasilinna, 1981
When Gunnar Huttunen turns up in a small village to restore a dilapidated mill, its inhabitants are instinctively wary. He’s big. He’s a bit odd. And he’s a stranger. Everyone loves his brilliant animal impressions but these feelings soon sour when he starts to howl wildly at night. And once the mean-spirited, small-minded locals realise Gunnar won’t conform, they conclude he must be mad. Hounded from his mill and persecuted for being different, only the love of his life and the local drunk stand by him. Can he survive? And how?
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21. The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, Thomas Teal (Translator), Ali Smith (Introduction), 1982
The lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others — is the subject of this, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Snow has been falling on the village all winter long. It covers windows and piles up in front of doors. The sun rises late and sets early, and even during the day there is little to do but trade tales. This year everybody’s talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. She has no use for the white lies that smooth social intercourse, and she can see straight to the core of any problem. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, appears to be Katri’s opposite: a respected member of the village, if an aloof one. Anna lives in a large empty house, venturing out in the spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. But Anna has something Katri wants, and to get it Katri will take control of Anna’s life and livelihood.
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22. Tainaron: Mail from Another City by Leena Krohn, Hildi Hawkins (Translator), Inari Krohn (Illustrator), 1985
Note: this science fiction/fantasy novel is by Finnish author Leena Krohn.
Consists of a series of letters sent beyond the sea from a city of insects. Nominated for the prestigious Finlandia prize, this is a book of changes that speaks of metamorphoses that test all of nature from a flea to a star, from stone and grass to a human.
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23. Axel by Bo Carpelan, David McDuff (Translator), 1986
In the 1930s, Bo Carpelan found mention of his great-uncle Axel in a biography of the composer Jean Sibelius. This friendship is the genesis of Carpelan’s fictional diary of Axel’s dual obsession with music and with a man who, unlike him, had enough confidence in his creativity to compose his own. In Carpelan’s novel, set during Finland’s struggle to escape Russian colonization, young Axel’s life is full of melancholic introspection communicated only to his diary. The diary is filled with short entries from adolescence describing antagonism toward the healthier and more joyous children around him, and his embarrassment at his futile attempts to coax beauty from his violin.
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24. A Fool’s Paradise by Anita Konkka, Agatha Dillard Haun (translator), Owen F. Witesman (Translator), 1988
Note: this novel is by Finnish author Anita Konkka.
“Marriage kills love. That’s why people get married.” The unmarried and unemployed narrator of A Fool’s Paradise is seeing a married man and must, because of her social security, apply and interview for jobs she does not want. Her life is founded on unsustainable contradictions. As her lover considers recommitting to his wife and as her poverty becomes increasingly dire, she confronts the temptations and contradictions of conventional success, but she is also overcome by jealousy and dissatisfaction. She travels to Russia and spies on her lover’s wife. She takes a job that she hates.
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25. Fair Play by Tove Jansson, Thomas Teal (Translator), Ali Smith (Introduction), 1989
Fair Play is the type of love story that is rarely told, a revelatory depiction of contentment, hard-won and exhilarating. Mari is a writer and Jonna is an artist, and they live at opposite ends of a big apartment building, their studios connected by a long attic passageway. They have argued, worked, and laughed together for decades. Yet they’ve never really stopped taking each other by surprise. Fair Play shows us Mari and Jona’s intertwined lives as they watch Fassbinder films and Westerns, critique each other’s work, spend time on a solitary island (recognisable to readers of Jansson’s The Summer Book), travel through the American Southwest, and turn life into nothing less than art.
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26. My First Murder (Maria Kallio #1) by Leena Lehtolainen, Owen F. Witesman (Translator), 1993
Maria Kallio has just been assigned her first murder investigation. To prove to herself and her squad that she has what it takes to be a detective, she’ll have to solve the death of Tommi Peltonen. Found floating facedown at the water’s edge of his Helsinki villa, Tommi had invited his choir group to spend a weekend at his retreat. But beneath the choir’s seemingly tight-knit bonds seethed bitter passion and jealousy. As Maria sets out to determine the difference between friends and foes, she uncovers the victim’s unsavoury past—and motives for all seven suspects. Now it’s up to her to untangle a complex set of clues before the killer strikes again.
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27. Urwind by Bo Carpelan, David McDuff (translator), 1993
In Urwind, on the face of it a simple tale of a Helsinki antiquarian bookseller whose wife has abandoned him, there is a complex layering of experience, past and present. The telling is more a matter of inner than outer events – intimate, rapt. In the “ur-vind”, or primordial attic, are stored not only relics from the story-teller’s past, but also memories of the neighbours, friends and relations who inhabited the apartment house in which he was brought up. The “ur-vind” is also the cosmic wind, blowing from beyond the reassuring walls of houses and apartments. And it is the story-teller’s name Daniel Urwind, in whom is focused a wealth of literary and artistic allusions and antecedents that include the Merz-Bau of Kurt Schwitters, the paintings of Cezanne and the fiction of Kafka.
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28. To Steal Her Love (Harjunpää #9) by Matti Yrjänä Joensuu, 1993
Detective Sergeant Timo Harjunpaa takes on a strangely elusive case in this mystery that begins with reports of a nocturnal visitor who tiptoes through apartments in Helsinki. Nothing is stolen or destroyed, but numerous women have awakened to an unknown presence in their bedrooms, only to assume in the light of morning that it was all a dream. At first the police take little notice, and the women themselves begin to doubt their sanity, but as evidence accumulates, the net closes around Tipi, a lock picker for a local burglary ring. Sergeant Harjunpaa’s big break comes when the suspect falls in love with one of his nighttime victims, yet he falters in his pursuit when he is forced to reassess his private life.
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29. Wonderful Women by the Sea by Monika Fagerholm, Joan Tate (Translator), 1994
Monika Fagerholm’s Wonderful Women by the Sea conjures the magical aura of the early sixties and the lives of two young Americanized women in Finland caught up in those historic times. In exquisite and daring language, Fagerholm explores the world of Rosa and Isabella, two would-be starlets in an age of consumerism and glamorous one-night stands. They spend their days sunbathing on the beach and their evenings at cocktail parties, following the exploits of Jackie Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor through the glossy pages of Life magazine. But dark undercurrents threaten to undermine the sanctity of their domestic oasis by the sea. As Tupperware parties give way to the women’s movement, Rosa and Isabella can’t avoid the social and political upheaval that explodes across the world in the turbulent summer of 1968 – changes that forever strip away the innocence we now associate with the sixties.
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30. Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi, Laurie Thompson (Translator), 2000
Note: this novel is set in Sweden near the border, with a character who self-identifies as Finnish.
Popular Music from Vittula tells the fantastical story of a young boy’s unordinary existence, peopled by a visiting African priest, a witch in the heart of the forest, cousins from Missouri, an old Nazi, a beautiful girl with a black Volvo, silent men and tough women, a champion-bicyclist music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand – and, not least, on a shiny vinyl disk, the Beatles. Mikael Niemi tells a story of a rural Sweden at once foreign and familiar, as a magical childhood slowly fades with the seasons into adult reality.
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31. New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani, Judith Landry (Translator), 2000
Note: this novel is set between Trieste, Italy and Helsinki, Finland.
One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can identifying him. When he regains consciousness he has lost his memory and cannot even remember what language he speaks. From a few things found on the man the doctor, who is originally from Finland, believes him to be a sailor and a fellow countryman, who somehow or other has ended up in Trieste. The doctor dedicates himself to teaching the man Finnish, beginning the reconstruction of the identity of Sampo Karjalainen, leading the missing man to return to Finland in search of his identity and his past.
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32. Troll: A Love Story (aka Not Before Sundown) by Johanna Sinisalo, Herbert Lomas (Translator), 2000
Everyone has their rough nights, but things have clearly taken a turn for the surreal when Angel, a young photographer, finds a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a young troll. Trolls are known in Scandinavian mythology as wild beasts like the werewolf, but this troll is just a small, wounded creature. Angel decides to offer it a safe haven for the night. In the morning Angel thinks he dreamed it all. But he finds the troll alive, well, and drinking from his toilet. What does one do with a troll in the city?
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33. The Cloud Sketcher by Richard Rayner, 2001
In a tiny village in Finland, Esko Vaananen is at the brink of despair – he loves a woman he can never have. Suddenly, in the magical light of the aurora borealis, he has a vision of an impossibly tall building rising gracefully from the frozen lake and disappearing into the clouds above him. This pilvenpiirtaja – “cloud sketcher” or skyscraper – sparks a lifelong quest for beauty in Esko. He will pursue and protect these two passions – his vision and his love – no matter how great the cost, for the rest of his life. It is a journey that leads him into the Bolshevik revolution and the Jazz Age nightclubs of New York City and to strike a Faustian bargain with a ruthless gangster – all in the pursuit of artistic perfection and impossible, unattainable love.
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34. The Priest of Evil (Harjunpää #10) by Matti Yrjänä Joensuu, 2003
After a strange succession of deaths at Helsinki tube stations, the police are baffled: no one has seen anything and the tapes from the CCTV show nothing. Detective Sergeant Timo Harjunpaa of the Helsinki Violent Crimes Unit has seen more than enough of the seamier side of human nature in his career, but the forces of evil have never before crossed his path in such an overwhelming fashion. It emerges that his adversary is a deluded but dangerous character living in an underground bunker in the middle of an uninhabited Helsinki hillside. Detective Sergeant Harjunpaa must now face his most terrifying case yet.
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35. The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm, 2004
In 1969, a young girl makes a trip from Coney Island to the swampy coastland on the rural outskirts of Helsinki, Finland. There, her death will immediately become part of local mythology, furnishing boys and girls with fodder for endless romantic imaginings. Everyone who lives near the swamp dreams about Eddie de Wire, the lost American girl. For both Sandra and Doris, two lonely, dreaming girls abandoned in different ways by their parents, this myth will propel them into their coming-of-age through mischievous role-playing games of love and death, in search of hidden secrets, the mysteries of the swamp, and the truth behind Eddie’s death. The girls construct their own world, their own language, and their own rules. But playing adult games has adult consequences, and what begins as two girls just striking matches leads to an inferno that threatens to consume them and tear their friendship apart.
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36. Nights of Awe (Ariel Kafka #1) by Harri Nykänen, Kristian London (Translator), 2004
Ariel Kafka, a middle-aged bachelor, is a detective in Helsinki and, as far as he knows, the only Jew on the entire Helsinki police force, which is why he’s picked to head up the investigation of a series of murders that began with two Arabic-looking men who may have been shouting Jewish obscenities as they died. Set during the days leading up to Yom Kippur, this complex tale moves quickly, as Ari attempts to figure it all out. With pressure from his colleagues, police administration, his brother, and the local Jewish community, can he uncover everything before the holiest day in the Jewish calendar? The clever combination of classic Jewish themes with the traditions of Nordic crime makes for a refreshing tale with wide appeal.
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37. The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen, 2005
Set in Finland in 1939, this is the story of one man who remains in his home town when everyone else has fled, burning down their houses in their wake, before the invading Russians arrive. Timo remains behind because he can’t imagine life anywhere else, doing anything else besides felling the trees near his home. This is a novel about belonging – a tale of powerful and forbidden friendships forged during a war, of unexpected bravery and astonishing survival instincts.The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles is not a novel about war, but about the lives of ordinary people dragged into war, each of whom only wants to find the path back home.
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38. Ice Moon (Kimmo Joentaa #1) by Jan Costin Wagner, John Brownjohn (Translation), 2005
Only a week after losing his wife, a distraught Detective Kimmo Joentaa returns to work to join a murder inquiry. It is the case of a woman smothered in her sleep — a curiously tranquil death, it seems, and one with no motive — and Kimmo becomes obsessed. The only clues are a half-empty bottle of red wine, two glasses, and a missing painting, a blurred landscape of no value. When a young man is found murdered in bed the next day in a hostel room with seven people asleep around him, Kimmo realises a serial killer must be at work. As he struggles with the memory of his wife’s early death, Kimmo investigates the murders and tries to understand the mind of the perpetrator, who appears to be quiet, self-effacing, and affable — why then the urge to destroy? Set in Finland during the unnervingly long days of late summer near the top of the world, Ice Moon is an unsettling, poignant mystery.
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39. When I Forgot by Elina Hirvonen, Douglas Robinson (Translator), 2005
An astonishingly assured and compelling debut, When I Forgot explores the relationship between a sister and her brother, the past that they share, and the painful memories that shape their lives forever. Anna is on her way to the hospital where her brother has been institutionalised when she falters, and in that pause her world splinters in a blazing display of memory and madness, of childhood security treasured and shattered, and of families blighted by psychological trauma — her brother’s and that of her boyfriend’s father, a Vietnam vet. September 11 serves as a backdrop for the story, and the Finnish perspective on America and its politics is as uncomfortable as it is compelling.
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40. The Limit by Riikka Pulkkinen, Lola Rogers (Translator), 2006
It’s a sweltering summer’s day, and Anja Aropalo is on her way home with two errands in mind: first, to water the roses, and then to commit suicide. She is slowly losing her husband to Alzheimer’s disease, and she has made him a terrible promise — one she’s not sure she can keep. For Anja’s niece, Mari, death is a teenage fantasy of grieving family and eternal beauty, an escape from the dullness of her life. But the adventure she longs for seems to come within reach when she begins a relationship with her charismatic teacher, Julian. His six-year-old daughter, Anni, is a witness to their blossoming affair, observing the lies and truths of those around her as she tries to discover what it is to be an adult.
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41. House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore, 2006
Set in Finland in the year 1901: Eeva, the young orphaned daughter of a revolutionary, is sent from the orphanage to work as housekeeper for Thomas, a widowed country doctor. Her challenging, independent, enigmatic presence disturbs Thomas as much as it fascinates him. Their relationship will shatter all the certainties of his life. Meanwhile, Eeva is drawn back to Helsinki, to the comrades of her childhood, and in particular to Lauri, the son of her father’s friend. It is a world full of danger. For this is Finland in political ferment – the power of the Russian Empire over its subject peoples is growing more oppressive, but resistance to the Tsar’s rule is growing too, both in Finland and in Russia. Some call such resistance terrorism; others call it a fight for freedom.
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42. The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Lola Rogers (Translator), 2006
Note: this novel is by Finnish author Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen.
Only very special people are chosen by children’s author Laura White to join ‘The Society’, an elite group of writers in the small town of Rabbit Back. Now a tenth member has been selected: Ella, literature teacher and possessor of beautifully curving lips. But soon Ella discovers that the Society is not what it seems. What is its mysterious ritual, ‘The Game’? What explains the strange disappearance that occurs at Laura’s winter party, in a whirlwind of snow? Why are the words inside books starting to rearrange themselves? Was there once another tenth member, before her?
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43. A Winter Book by Tove Jansson, 2006
Following the widely acclaimed and bestselling The Summer Book, here is A Winter Book collection of some of Tove Jansson’s best loved and most famous stories. Drawn from youth and older age, and spanning most of the twentieth century, this newly translated selection provides a thrilling showcase of the great Finnish writer’s prose, scattered with insights and home truths. It has been selected and is introduced by Ali Smith, and there are afterwords by Philip Pullman, Esther Freud and Frank Cottrell Boyce.
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44. Palace of the Snow Queen by Barbara Sjoholm, 2007
A frequent traveler to Northern Europe, Barbara Sjoholm set off one winter to explore a region that had long intrigued her. Sjoholm first travels to Kiruna, Sweden, to see the Ice Hotel under construction and to meet the ice artists who make its rooms into environmental art. Traveling to the North Cape, she encounters increasing darkness and cold, but also radiant light over the mountains and snow fields. She crosses the Finnmark Plateau by dogsled, attends a Sami film festival (with an outdoor ice screen), and visits Santa’s Post Office in Finland. Over the course of three winters, Sjoholm unearths the region’s rich history, including the culture of the Sami.
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45. Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendel Vida, 2007
Far, far north, sitting above the Arctic Circle, Lapland is a world made of ice; a place both foreign and perilous that unexpectedly lures New Yorker Clarissa Iverton from what had finally become a comfortable life. At 14, her mother disappeared. Now 28, and just days after the death of her father, Clarissa discovers that he wasn’t her father after all, and the only clues to her true heritage are a world away. Abandoning her fiancé, she flies to Helsinki, seeking to uncover the secrets her mother kept for so long. While piecing together the fragments of her mother’s mysterious past, Clarissa is led to the Sami, Lapland’s native ‘reindeer people,’ who dwell in a stark and frozen landscape, under the northern lights. It is there that she must summon the courage to confront an unbearable truth, and the violent act that ties her to this ancient people.
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46. Purge by Sofi Oksanen, 2008
Note: this book is by a Finnish author and is mostly set in Estonia.
When Aliide Truu, an older woman living alone in the Estonian countryside, finds a disheveled girl huddled in her front yard, she suppresses her misgivings and offers her shelter. Zara is a young sex-trafficking victim on the run from her captors, but a photo she carries with her soon makes it clear that her arrival at Aliide’s home is no coincidence. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in a complex arithmetic of suspicion and revelation to distill each other’s motives; gradually, their stories emerge, the culmination of a tragic family drama of rivalry, lust, and loss that played out during the worst years of Estonia’s Soviet occupation.
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47. Behind God’s Back (Ariel Kafka #3) by Harri Nykänen, Kristian London (Translation), 2009
There are two Jewish cops in all of Helsinki. One of them, Ariel Kafka, a lieutenant in the Violent Crime Unit, identifies himself as a policeman first, then a Finn, and lastly a Jew. Kafka is a religiously non-observant forty-something bachelor who is such a stubborn, dedicated policeman that he’s willing to risk his career to get an answer. Murky circumstances surround his investigation of a Jewish businessman’s murder. Neo-Nazi violence, intergenerational intrigue, shady loans — predictable lines of investigation lead to unpredictable culprits. But a second killing strikes closer to home, and the Finnish Security Police come knocking. The tentacles of Israeli politics and Mossad reach surprisingly far, once again wrapping Kafka in their sticky embrace.
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48. The Human Part by Kari Hotakainen, 2009
An elderly woman agrees to sell her life to a blocked writer she meets at a book fair. She needs to talk – her husband has not spoken since a family tragedy some months ago. She claims that her grown-up children are doing well, but the writer imagines less salubrious lives for them, as the downturn of Finland’s economic boom begins to bite. Perhaps he’s on to something. The Human Part is pure laugh-out-loud satire, laying bare the absurdities of modern society in the most vicious and precise manner imaginable.
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49. True by Riikka Pulkkinen, 2010
Elsa is dying. Her husband, Martti, and daughter Eleonoora are struggling to accept the crushing thought that they are soon to lose her. As Elsa becomes ever more fragile, Eleonoora’s childhood memories are slipping away. Meanwhile, Eleonoora’s daughter Anna spends her time pondering the fates of passersby. For her the world is full of stories. But the story that will change her forever is the one about Eeva, her mother’s nanny, whom her grandparents have been silent about for years. Eeva’s forgotten story, which Anna first learns of when she discovers an old dress of Eeva’s, is finally revealed layer by layer. The tale that unfolds is about a mother and daughter, about how memory can deceive us — and sometimes that is the most merciful thing that can happen.
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50. Snow Angels (Inspector Kari Vaara #1) by James Thompson, 2010
Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the darkest time of the year in Lapland, above the Arctic Circle. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold cause everyone to go just a little bit insane, whether or not they’ve just killed someone. A beautiful Somalian refugee-turned-actress is found murdered on a reindeer farm, gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Inspector Kari Vaara, head of the rural police force, is under great pressure not only to solve this crime himself, without the help of the big-city cops from Helsinki, but also to keep the potentially explosive case out of the news. Sufia Elmi had become a tabloid fixture, and her death — not to mention the awful way she met it — is sure to send shock waves across this insular, secretly racist country. Was this murder a hate crime, a sex crime — or both?
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51. Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto by Maile Chapman, 2010
In a remote, piney wood in Finland stands a convalescent hospital called Suvanto, a curving concrete example of austere Scandinavian design. It is the 1920s, and the patients, all women, seek relief from ailments real and imagined. On the lower floors are the stoic Finnish women; on the upper floors are foreign women of privilege — the “up-patients”. They are tended to by head nurse Sunny Taylor, an American who has fled an ill-starred life only to retreat behind a mask of crisp professionalism. On a late-summer day a new patient arrives on Sunny’s ward — a faded, irascible former ballroom-dance instructor named Julia Dey.
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52. The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg, Fleur Jeremiah and Emily Jeremiah (Translators), 2010
A Shakespearean drama from icy Finland.
Finland, 1809. Henrik and Erik are brothers who fought on opposite sides in the war between Sweden and Russia. With peace declared, they both return to their snowed-in farm. But who is the master? Sexual tensions, old grudges, family secrets: all come to a head in this dark and gripping saga.
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53. Compartment No. 6 by Rosa Liksom, Lola Rogers (Translation), 2011
Note: this novel is based around a Finnish character.
In the waning years of the Soviet Union, a sad young Finnish woman boards a train in Moscow. Bound for Mongolia, she’s trying to put as much space as possible between her and a broken relationship. Wanting to be alone, she chooses an empty compartment – No. 6 – but her solitude is soon shattered by the arrival of a fellow passenger: Vadim Nikolayevich Ivanov, a grizzled, opinionated, foul-mouthed former soldier. Vadim fills the compartment with his long and colourful stories, recounting in lurid detail his sexual conquests and violent fights.
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54. The Midwife by Katja Kettu, David Hackston (Translator), 2011
Orphaned into an unforgiving foster home and raised as an outsider, Weird-Eye shoulders her unflattering nickname. She relies on her vivid imagination to sustain her work as a midwife bringing newborns into the world while World War II overruns her native Finland, desecrating life. She finds herself drawn to the handsome, otherworldly Johannes Angelhurst, a war photographer working for the SS. To be near him, Weird-Eye — whom Johannes lovingly calls Wild-Eye — volunteers to serve as a nurse at the prison camp where he has been assigned.
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55. The Beggar and the Hare by Tuomas Kyrö, David McDuff (Translator), 2011
Vatanescu, an impoverished Romanian construction worker, wants a future for himself and a pair of football boots for his son. So he decides to head north to a cold, dark country where there is money to be made. Finding his way in Finland, he takes up with Russian human trafficker Yegor Kugar and joins the bottom rung of a begging ring. Before long Vatanescu is on the streets of Helsinki, earning a small percentage on spare change. But Yegor – a crook interested only in status and screwing – has strict views on what it means to be a beggar, and when Vatanescu enjoys a sumptuous feast from the contents of a dumpster, a conflict ensues. Soon he is on the run from both an international crime organisation and the Finnish police.
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56. The Blood of Angels by Johanna Sinisalo, Lola Rogers (Translator), 2011
Note: this story is set in America and based upon a Finnish character.
It is claimed Albert Einstein said that if bees disappear from the earth, mankind has four years left. When bee-vanishings of unprecedented scale hit the United States, Orvo, a Finnish beekeeper, knows all too well where it will lead. And when he sees the queen dead in his hives one day, it’s clear the epidemic has spread to Europe, and the world is coming to an end. Orvo’s special knowledge of bees just may enable him to glimpse a solution to catastrophe: he takes a desperate step onto a path where only he and the bees know the way but it propels him into conflict with his estranged, but much-loved son, a committed animal activist. A magical plunge into the myth of death and immortality, this is a tale of human blindness in the face of devastation — and the inevitable.
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57. Ice (Petter Kummel #2) by Ulla-Lena Lundberg, Thomas Teal (Translator), 2012
It is the summer of 1946. A novice Lutheran priest, his wife and baby daughter arrive at a windswept island off the coast of Finland, where they are welcomed by its frugal, self-sufficient community of fisher folk turned reluctant farmers. In this deeply atmospheric and quietly epic tale, Lundberg uses a wealth of everyday detail to draw us irresistibly into a life and mindset far removed from our own – stoic and devout yet touched with humour and a propensity for song. With each season, the young family’s love of the island and its disparate and scattered inhabitants deepens, and when the winter brings ice new and precarious links appear. Told in spare, simple prose that mirrors the islanders’ unadorned style, this is a story as immersive as it is heartrending.
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58. Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta, 2012
Note: this book is by a Finnish author and is set in a world with changed geography.
Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.
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59. The Wednesday Club by Kjell Westö, Neil Smith (Translator), 2013
1938. Hitler’s expansionist policies are arousing both anger and admiration, not least in the ‘Wednesday Club’ in Helsinki. Something of a relaxed gentlemen’s club, the group’s members are old friends of lawyer Claes Thune. They socialise, discuss politics and drink together, but this year it is apparent that the political unrest in Europe is having an effect on the cohesion of the club. Thune, who has returned home after several years serving as a diplomat in Moscow and Stockholm, has recently divorced and is at something of a loss; he runs his law practice without any great enthusiasm, and the growing political anxiety and the chaos in his own life feel like two sides of the same coin. Fortunately he has the assistance of his new secretary, Matilda Wiik.
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60. The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo, Lola Rogers (Translation), 2013
The Core of the Sun further cements Johanna Sinisalo’s reputation as a master of literary speculative fiction and of her country’s unique take on it, dubbed “Finnish weird.” Set in an alternative historical present, in a “eusistocracy”—an extreme welfare state—that holds public health and social stability above all else, it follows a young woman whose growing addiction to illegal chili peppers leads her on an adventure into a world where love, sex, and free will are all controlled by the state. The Eusistocratic Republic of Finland has bred a new human sub-species of receptive, submissive women, called eloi, for sex and procreation, while intelligent, independent women are relegated to menial labor and sterilized so that they do not carry on their “defective” line.
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61. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, 2013
Note: this is a Japanese novel, partly set in Finland.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. Here Haruki Murakami—one of the most revered voices in literature today—gives us a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.
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62. The Winter War by Philip Teir, Tiina Nunnally (Translator), 2013
On the surface, the Paul family are living the liberal, middle-class Scandinavian dream. Max Paul is a renowned sociologist and his wife Katriina has a well-paid job in the public sector. They live in an airy apartment in the centre of Helsinki. But look closer and the cracks start to show. As he approaches his sixtieth birthday, the certainties of Max’s life begin to dissolve. He hasn’t produced any work of note for decades. His wife no longer loves him. His grown-up daughters – one in London, one in Helsinki – have problems of their own. So when a former student turned journalist shows up and offers him a seductive lifeline, Max starts down a dangerous path from which he may never find a way back.
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63. My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci, David Hackston (Translator), 2014
A love story set in two countries in two radically different moments in time, bringing together a young man, his mother, a boa constrictor, and one capricious cat. In 1980s Yugoslavia, a young Muslim girl is married off to a man she hardly knows, but what was meant to be a happy match goes quickly wrong. Soon thereafter her country is torn apart by war and she and her family flee. Years later, her son, Bekim, grows up a social outcast in present-day Finland, not just an immigrant in a country suspicious of foreigners, but a gay man in an unaccepting society. Aside from casual hookups, his only friend is a boa constrictor whom, improbably — he is terrified of snakes — he lets roam his apartment. Then, during a visit to a gay bar, Bekim meets a talking cat who moves in with him and his snake.
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64. They Know Not What They Do by Jussi Valtonen, Kristian London (Translator), 2014
A young man’s decision to put career before family leads to chilling consequences. Joe Chayefski has got what he always wanted: a reputation as one of America’s top neuroscientists, a beautiful wife and two perfect daughters. But when his lab is attacked by animal rights activists, Joe is forced to face the past and reconnect with the son he abandoned twenty years earlier. As he struggles to deal with the sudden collision of his two lives – and to save his eldest daughter from the clutches of an unscrupulous tech company – Joe has to reconsider his priorities and take drastic action to save those he loves.
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65. The Girl and the Bomb (Metro-Trilogia #1) by Jari Järvelä, Kristian London (Translation), 2014
Rust and Metro live life to the fullest in the small Finnish city of Kotka. The lovers work together by day and write graffiti by night, always staying one step ahead of the law. But their luck runs out after an ambush by rogue security guards causes Rust to fall to his death. Having literally left their marks all over the city, Metro cannot help but be reminded of Rust everywhere she goes, making it impossible for her to move past the tragedy. Heartbroken and alone, she becomes determined to get to the bottom of her partner’s death and to exact revenge on those responsible by using the tool she knows best: spray paint.
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66. The Black Tongue by Marko Hautala, Jenni Salmi (Translation), 2014
For generations, the urban legend of Granny Hatchet has plagued the quiet residential area of Suvikylä in northern Finland. As the story goes, this immortal killer murders her victims with a hatchet, then buries the hearts in a potato field and eats them after they’ve rotted black. But not everyone is convinced it is just a story. Maisa Riipinen has returned to her hometown to complete her dissertation on urban folklore at the same time that Samuel Autio has come home to arrange his father’s funeral. As hazy, disturbing memories from their pasts meld with strange events in the present, Maisa and Samuel attempt to make sense of the town’s fearful obsession with the mythical Granny Hatchet. But if it’s only a legend, then why are people still vanishing without a trace?
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67. Norma by Sofi Oksanen, Owen F. Witesman (Translator), 2015
A spellbinding new novel set in present-day Helsinki, about a young woman with a fantastical secret who is trying to solve the mystery of her mother’s death. When Anita Naakka jumps in front of an oncoming train, her daughter, Norma, is left alone with the secret they have spent their lives hiding: Norma has supernatural hair, sensitive to the slightest changes in her mood – and the moods of those around her – moving of its own accord, corkscrewing when danger is near. And so it is her hair that alerts her, while she talks with a strange man at her mother’s funeral, that her mother may not have taken her own life.
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68. Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction by Leena Krohn, 2015
From cities of giant insects to a mysterious woman claiming to be the female Don Quixote, Leena Krohn’s fiction has fascinated and intrigued readers for over forty years. Within these covers you will discover a pelican that can talk and a city of gold. You will find yourself exploring a future of intelligence both artificial and biotech, along with a mysterious plant that induces strange visions. Krohn writes eloquently, passionately, about the nature of reality, the nature of Nature, and what it means to be human. One of Finland’s most iconic writers, translated into many languages, and winner of the prestigious Finlandia Prize, Krohn has had an incredibly distinguished career.
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69. Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt, Owen F. Witesman (Translator), 2015
Note: this novel is by Finnish author Laura Lindstedt.
Seven women meet in a white, undefined space seconds after their deaths. Time, as we understand it, has ceased to exist, and all bodily sensations seem to have disappeared. None of the women can remember what happened to her, or how she got there. They don’t know each other. They don’t know why they are there – or where they are. In turn they try to remember, to piece together the fragments of their lives, their identities, their lost loves, and to pinpoint the moment they left their former lives behind.
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70. The Death of the Perfect Sentence by Rein Raud, Matthew Hyde (Translator), 2015
This thoughtful spy novel cum love story is set mainly in Estonia during the dying days of the Soviet Union, but also in Russia, Finland and Sweden. A group of young pro-independence dissidents devise an elaborate scheme for smuggling copies of KGB files out of the country, and their fates become entangled, through family and romantic ties, with the security services never far behind them. Through multiple viewpoints the author evokes the curious minutiae of everyday life, offers wry observations on the period through personal experience, and asks universal questions about how interpersonal relationships are affected when caught up in momentous historical changes.
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71. The Girl and the Rat (Metro-Trilogia #2) by Jari Järvelä, Kristian London (Translator), 2015
After losing her boyfriend and partner in crime, Rust, during a tragic run-in with security, Metro moves to Berlin to start over. She finds a home in a grimy squat where she befriends other graffiti artists, and together they carry out aggressive attacks, bombing entire trains and buildings with fresh paint and achieving international notoriety by posting their hits online. Adorning the attic of their squat is a wall-size piece by world-famous tagger Banksy depicting a silhouetted rat spraying a wall. It’s a hidden treasure amid the squalor. But when Metro comes home one day to find bodies—including one familiar face from her past—scattered around the building and the amazing mural missing entirely, she and her friends are forced into action. The piece turns up at auction for millions of dollars, and Metro must follow it to its new home in Kotka, Finland, a town she thought she had left behind for good.
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72. The Man Who Died by Antti Tuomainen, David Hackston (Translator), 2016
A successful entrepreneur in the mushroom industry, Jaakko Kaunismaa is a man in his prime. At just 37 years of age, he is shocked when his doctor tells him that he’s dying. What is more, the cause is discovered to be prolonged exposure to toxins; in other words, someone has slowly but surely been poisoning him. Determined to find out who wants him dead, Jaakko embarks on a suspenseful rollercoaster journey full of unusual characters, bizarre situations and unexpected twists.
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73. The Summer House by Philip Teir, Tiina Nunnally (Translator), 2017
The light greenery of the early summer is trembling around Erik and Julia as they shove their children into the car and start the drive towards the house by the sea on the west coast of Finland where they will spend the summer. From the outside they are a happy young family looking forward to a long holiday together. But look under the surface, and their happiness shows signs of not lasting the summer. On the eve of the holiday, Erik lost his job, but hasn’t yet told the family. And the arrival of Julia’s childhood friend Marika – along with her charismatic husband Chris, the leader of a group of environmental activists that have given up hope for planet Earth and are returning to a primitive lifestyle – deepens the hairline cracks that had so far remained invisible.
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74. Ellen’s Song by Ben Kalland, 2018
Finland, years ago: Markus and his three sisters spend their childhood summers at a cottage by the sea. Younger sister Ellen is heading toward an international career as a violinist. But tragedies strike. One icy night Markus’ friend drowns in a horrible accident. One of the sisters is banished from the family, Ellen’s violin is silenced forever, and Markus leaves the country. New York, present day: Markus has made a career as a top-ranked elder in the Watchtower Society. Then one day he receives a letter from a woman who claims to be his daughter. He is compelled to revisit his family’s history—and he realizes that he will have to face the truth about what happened to his best friend and to his talented sister.
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75. The Girl in Gray by Annette Lyon, 2019
In November of 1939, Sini Toivola is sure of two things: she loves Marko Linna, and she has a comfortable life in Helsinki. But when the massive Soviet army invades her beloved homeland and Marko spurns her affections, her life is turned upside down. Needing a fresh start, Sini decides to join the female volunteer corps – the Lotta Svärd – and is sent to serve near the front lines. Service at a field hospital proves a good distraction – until Sini discovers a Russian soldier lost behind their camp.
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76. The Witch Hunter (Jessica Niemi #1) by Max Seeck, 2019
A shocking murder in an affluent Helsinki suburb has ties to the occult in this thrilling US debut from Finnish author Max Seeck. A bestselling author’s wife has been found dead in a gorgeous black evening gown, sitting at the head of a formally set dinner table. Her most chilling feature – her face is frozen in a ghastly smile. At first it seems as though a deranged psychopath is reenacting the gruesome murders from The Witch Hunter, the bestseller written by the victim’s husband. But investigator Jessica Niemi soon realises she’s not looking for a single killer but rather for dozens of believers in a sinister form of witchcraft.
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What do you think of these books set in Finland?
Have you read any of these books set in Finland? Have you visited Finland? Is Finland your home? Do you know some great books that I’ve missed? What is your favourite book set in Finland? I’d love to hear your thoughts and tips on books set in Finland in the comments below!
Looking for more reading ideas?
If you’re looking for more books set in Europe, check out some of these popular posts:
- Books Set in Spain: Spanish Novels
- Books Set in Portugal: Portuguese Novels
- Books Set In France: French Novels
- Books Set In Italy: Italian Novels
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