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THE SAPROPHILE by Anna-Kaari Hakkarainen has been awarded the Jarkko Laine literature prize! This is how the jury describes the winner:
“The Saprophile is a mutable literary exploration of womanhood, love, and the masculine myth of artistic creation. The novel also depicts mistreatment, manipulation, the limits of personality, self-determination, and self-sacrifice. The novel’s central configurations and tensions recur in branching narrative lines, constantly transforming, like the branches of a tree or a river dividing into tributaries. From the narrative emerges intersecting images, characters, and motifs, all of which are essential. If even one were missing, the picture would not be complete. Hakkarainen’s strength as a writer lies in her ability to make the novel feel whole, even as the intersecting, mutually commenting characters, perspectives, levels, and structures continuously shift.”
The Jarkko Laine Prize recognizes all genres of fiction and has now been awarded for the seventh time. The prize is given to a challenging Finnish work of fiction published within the previous three calendar years. The prize is worth 10,000 euros. In 2024, The Saprophile was nominated for the Finlandia Prize.
DOWNLOAD MATERIALS FOR THE SAPROPHILE HERE
A brilliant novel that dives deep into the human psyche, explores themes such as power, passion, and the world of Ingmar Bergman, and is a reflection on being human through art.
The Saprophile is a hypnotic treatise on power and writing. It is the autopsy of a novel, a hybrid that seeks to go where genres end. It is a novel about Ingmar Bergman’s films, about a desire that refuses to obey, about an island, about how easy it is to lose yourself in another person, and how difficult it is to find your way back.
Like a saprophile, an organism that lives and thrives on dead or decaying organic matter, The Saprophile is like a literary organism that eats away at age-old concepts and structures.
THE SAPROPHILE
Marraseliö
Tammi 2024, 672 pp.
Rights sold:
FINLAND: Tammi (orig.)
Reading materials:
Finnish edition
English sample & synopsis
