Marko Hautala
Winner of the Kalevi Jäntti Literary Prize for ‘Shrouds’
Marko Hautala (b. 1973) is an author and a teacher who used to work in a psychiatric hospital. His first novel The Self-Illuminated Ones (Itsevalaisevat, 2008) received the Tiiliskivi Prize. In 2010 Hautala received the Kalevi Jäntti Literary Prize for Young Authors for Shrouds.
Written by Marko Hautala
Worms
Rights sold: German
Worms is an intensely emotional tale of the long shadows cast by the past and atonement for irreversible deeds.
Aaron and Jenny’s marriage is in good shape on the surface when they are invited to the outer islands in the Gulf of Bothnia. Aaron’s adult son, Alexi, lives there in seclusion due to a brain injury sustained in a serious car accident. The invitation cannot be turned down, since it could be the last chance for reconciliation and forgiveness. Jenny is Alexi’s former sweetheart, and the father’s scandalous secret relationship with his son’s girlfriend caused deep rifts between them at the time. However, on the rocky, barren island lurks the mysterious legacy of a shipwreck, marked by nine stone graves and a small, dilapidated chapel. These ghostly memorials conceal an ancient tragedy and an ideology in which a sinner is of no more worth than a worm crawling in the dirt. And on the island, that legacy appears to live on.
If you like Johan Theorin, you’ll love Marko Hautala!
Written by Marko Hautala
Shrouds
Rights sold: Italian, German
Shrouds is a gripping novel about the power of the human mind as well as a merciless depiction of the harshness of life at a mental institution.
Thirty-year-old Mikael is assigned as the designated nurse of an elderly male patient in the closed ward of a mental hospital. The patient has committed an inexplicable murder, and has since retreated into a strange Egyptian counter-world, haughtily propagating his death cult through eerily hypnotic sermons. Mikael struggles to understand his patient, but due to his own life situation he fails to remain professionally detatched. His colleagues offer no help: dark cynicism dominates the everyday life of the hospital. The reader gradually finds out more about the patient as the old man’s wartime experiences unfold through a series of dramatic flashbacks, presenting one possible explanation for the onset of his disease. However, Hautala is too subtle and mature to offer a single cut-and-dry solution.
Praises:
“The ending offers a surprise which upgrades a fine story to an excellent one.” – Metro
“An exciting multidimensional tale of loss and insanity. – – Hautala is such a skilled writer that the narration is not lost in shallow horror.”
– Ilona
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