Original title: Swiftin ovella
Published: 2011
Publisher: Tammi
Class/genre: Literary
Pages: 269
Lennart Beren, having just spent five years in Ireland, gets a phone call from an old friend, Johannes Kelps, who will be dying soon. ”I want you to finish my book”, Johannes says. After the death of Johannes, Lennart moves into his house, as agreed. There he discovers a secret room with a strange device, and suddenly Lennart finds himself back in Ireland. But he has also travelled back in time, and has become Watt, a man-servant of Jonathan Swift. Soon he – and the reader – is initiated into the life of the famous satirist.
This highly inventive novel is a dramatic tale of ill fate and a brave fight against injustice. The drama unfolds in part in a fictitious Finnish setting, in part in Ireland in the 18th century. And the drama ends, finally, where it all began: in the house of Johannes Kelps, once a famous scientist who withdrew suddenly from the academic world and bought an old, remote house in the country. Why? What happened to him?