The Logbook of Love

Elina Hirvonen

Original title: Rakkauksien lokikirja

Author: Elina Hirvonen

Published: 2023

Publisher: WSOY

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 250

Reading material:

English sample and overview

What’s love all about?

In her unique Finnish voice, award-winning author Elina Hirvonen has written a heartfelt and unforgettable novel about everything we love. In The Logbook of Love, conversations about love form a sea of connections among people from different backgrounds and places.

The narrator meets with friends and strangers, moves between the past and the present, shifts from country to country. Everywhere she goes, she talks with others about love: romantic love, the love for justice and human rights, marital love, the love of parents for children, the love that can bind friends from different cultures and backgrounds – and the love that, no matter how powerful it is, sometimes fails to bridge the gaps between people. 

The individuals she encounters, and the love stories they tell, leave their mark on the narrator. Her reflections on what she has heard and experienced portray a world that’s heating up too quickly as it slips into conflict and violence, but where everyone still continues to search for meaning, hope and joy.

“From one of Finland’s most talented writers comes a beautiful, compelling and evocative novel about the universal power of love in its many diverse forms and voices, taking readers from Finland to Iraq, Malawi, Morocco, Spain, Zambia and points further afield.”

—Katja Pantzar, author of The Finnish Way, TarcherPerigee, Penguin Random House

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Rights sold:
FINLAND: WSOY (orig.)

About author

Elina Hirvonen

Elina Hirvonen is an award-winning author of adults’ and children’s prose, a journalist and documentary filmmaker. She has written four highly acclaimed adults’ novels that are at the same time tragic and beautiful. She is also known for her picture book series Princess Rascal, and a middle-grade trilogy Julia & P.A.L. Her books have been translated to 15 languages.

Her new novel, The Logbook of Love, is published in Finland in August 2023. Hirvonen has received the Kalevi Jäntti Prize and the Nuori Aleksis Prize, and has been nominated for Finlandia Prize and Debut Prize.

Bibliography


2023, Literary Fiction

Elina Hirvonen

The Logbook of Love


2023, Chapter Books (3-6 Years)

Elina Hirvonen

The Rescuers Julia and Charlie


2021, Middle Grade (8-12 Years)

Elina Hirvonen

Charlie and the Wombat Warriors


2021, Chapter Books (3-6 Years)

Elina Hirvonen

Princess Rascal and the Quarrel Spell


2020, Middle Grade (8-12 Years)

Elina Hirvonen

Julia & P.A.L


2019, Chapter Books (3-6 Years)

Elina Hirvonen

Princess Rascal and The Potty Words


2019, Literary Fiction

Elina Hirvonen

Red Storm


2017, Chapter Books (3-6 Years)

Elina Hirvonen

Princess Rascal


2015, Literary Fiction

Elina Hirvonen

When Time Runs Out