A refreshing human comedy about pleasure and the dangers of self-deceit, a fatal mistake and eating jam.

The Silola family is the picture of perfection. There’s the house by the sea that looks like a sugar cube. There’s the father, a famous conductor who exhibits absolutely no trace of the famous Finnish melancholy. There’s the mother, an elegant interior designer who facelifts people’s homes with the gentle bedside manner of a family doctor.

And then there are the three children: beautiful, brilliant 22-year-old Astra; 18-year-old novice body-builder Silmu; and 4-year-old Pelagia, an afterthought who scatters toy animals around the family’s gorgeous home.

Everything is perfect as long as no one finds the carefully hidden vials and the hypodermic needles unsmiling boys jab in each other in the dark corners of the gym. And no one must know about the yacht, its steamed-up windows and chandelier, its shackles and whips. And let’s keep quiet about that fatal mistake on that holiday trip.

Jelly Control is a human comedy about family, happiness, corporeality, pleasure and self-deceit. It is also a lively novel about the dangers of eating jam, the ins and outs of gym etiquette and the basic principles of throwing the party of the year.

Rights sold:

FINLAND, WSOY (Original publisher)
GERMANY, Suhrkamp

A mystical love story. Beauty meets two beasts in search of the meaning of life and death.

Vic had no expectations of life after death. But here he is, watching while a serious woman pulls a serious little boy on a sledge through a snow storm. How did it all happen?

Vivacious Säde (Ray) and cynical English archaeologist Vic are beavering away on excavations in Finland, led by the fiery and charismatic Voula with a motley crew of disciples worshipping ancient gods.

At home, Säde has Antti, a successful game programmer, waiting for her. What will the excavations turn up? Do gods exist? Who wins the heart of carefree, disorganized and enigmatic Säde?

Everyone loves Säde. She’s every man’s dream and every woman’s best friend, a fun-loving and delightfully sexually uninhibited young archaeologist. But such girls don’t really exist. The deepest secrets lurk behind the broadest smiles. This is not a girl you want to invite to the dig.

Ray Girl is a mystical love story, an unusual love triangle, a comedy about the collision between faith and science, a coming-of-age story that combines genres and a novel about an atheist who wants to belong to a cult. It is sure to make you laugh and likely to make you cry. The second, highly anticipated novel from a unique writing talent.

Rights sold:
FINLAND, WSOY (Orig. publisher)
CZECH REPUBLIC, Nakladatelství Brána
DENMARK, Turbine
GERMANY, Suhrkamp

Sometimes even Christmas has a sinister heart.

Deep in the Finnish wilderness stands a glittery theme park called Jingle Land, ruled by eccentric megalomaniac Veikko H. Halkio. His vision for a land where Christmas is eternal includes strippers dressed as sexy elves, hordes of creepy animatronic reindeer and the world’s largest chocolate fountain. In order to complete his dream, Veikko desperately yearns for his boyhood crush, Molli, to perform at the park.

Molli and Veikko share a dark secret, and she has spent most of her life trying to put the incident behind her. Now a happily married mother of two, she wants nothing to do with his holiday-obsessed extravaganza. But when a devastating accident leaves her as the sole breadwinner, she has to accept Veikko’s offer.

Although rehearsing an avant-garde Christmas show awakens some of Molli’s long-dormant ambitions as a performer, she soon encounters buried secrets at Jingle Land – both in Veikko’s potentially criminal business operations and deep underneath the park. There are some elements of Jingle Land of which even Veikko appears to be unaware.

Original publisher: FINLAND, WSOY