We wish to let you know that FILI Spring 2023 grant application period will last until May 1st. Now is the right time to acquire your next Finnish title and author, and apply for the FILI translation grant!

The FILI grants are offered to support the translation of Finnish literature. The grants are intended for publishers outside Finland, to be applied towards the translator’s fee. Grants are awarded for translating works of fiction and general non-fiction, children’s and young adult (YA) books, and comics and graphic novels from the Finnish, Finland-Swedish and Sámi languages.

Grants are awarded to cover part of the translation cost, on average, 50 to 70 per cent. Grants are also available for printing costs for comics and graphic novels and for children’s picture books. Read more here: APPLY FOR THE FILI GRANTS

In the previous application period of Winter 2023, 80 projects received the FILI grant with over 125,000 EUR awarded in total! See the latest awarded projects here.
Remember that FILI also gives grants for reader’s reports – and they cna be applied for at any time! More information here.

This is a perfect time to acquire exciting new Finnish titles – see some of our Spring highlights below!

Follow the Butterfly

Martta Kaukonen

A Spiegel bestseller!

An addictive psychological thriller in the spirit of Gillian Flynn

Ida, 20, a serial killer who was abducted as a child, starts therapy with celebrity therapist Clarissa. Only one of them knows that they share a mutual secret from the past. Will the other one realize it before she gets murdered?

“It’s exciting how the author succeeded in her novel to present the events as present, but the characters spoke to you as if they were reflecting on the events with us in a Netflix series. That was definitely the icing on the cake for me! [–] FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY [was] a real page turner. Every twist hits you cold and every solution you come up with is destroyed by the author in one sentence. A thriller that will take your breath away. You can no longer trust your own thoughts and the individual characters. Recommended reading for psychological thriller fans!”
– Lisa Albrecht on academicworld.net, Germany

Request the English materials for FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY here

Inherited Land

Maria Turtschaninoff

“The book is beautiful like a piece of jewellery and rich like a forest.”
– Åbo Underrättelser

Inherited Land is an episodic work of literary fiction depicting human relationships with nature across generations, following in the tradition of family sagas like One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

Inherited Land tells multiple enchanting stories about short human lives on a small farmstead in the north of Finland with its golden cloudberries and the mythical woodland animals. The hub of the narrative is a marsh close to the farmstead, and nature is the constant while humans are like dragonflies: here one day, gone the next. Across four centuries, the people face wars, epidemics, and heartbreaks, but from the woods they find shelter and a place to be themselves.

Inherited Land is a novel about the climate crisis without ever mentioning it by name. Instead, the novel explores what people have thought about their environment, how they have used it and why. The novel is a reminder of where we have come from, and what a relationship between humans and nature could look like in the future.

Request the English materials for INHERITED LAND here

The Logbook of Love

Elina Hirvonen
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.

“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

Request the English materials for THE LOGBOOK OF LOVE here

The Black Mirror

Emma Puikkonen

Three women, three epochs and three destinies.

Nominated for Nordic Council Literary Prize 2023!

The Black Mirror is a magically beautiful novel about a world ran by oil.  And about the humankind who must take a look at the looking glass.

When Ida Tarbell is a child, black gold is springing from the ground in her hometown of Rouseville in the 1860s. When Lotte Teer is a child in 1973, people gather around on a picnic on an Amsterdam highway. Astrid Fuglesang has always dreamed of oil rigs and lands on one in the year 2028.

For millions of years, black liquid has hibernated beneath the earth and the ocean. When it is awoken, the humankind can no longer live without it. Ida, Lotte and Astrid are driven women whose fates are swayed by oil. Each of them takes control of it, in a way.

Ørja

Riikka Sandberg

A fateful novel about friendship, passion and secrets buried in the sea from the end of the occupation of Norway till the 1970s.

1952. A gigantesque mail carrier lives on the island of Ørja with her boat-building father. His last boat is left unfinished, and the daughter takes on the task. The boat is sold to an island-dweller who is the subject of many chilling rumors.

1976. Tine arrives in Ørja to put up a traveling cinema. But what is even more interesting than the projector, is the wire recorder she finds in the shed. It talks of a tragic past that the island community has kept silent about.

A rebel. A spouse. A savior. A friend. A lover. How many lives can one person live? What happens when they collide?

”The novel is filled with fantastic nature descriptions. The author has written it with such detail, that the reader can sense the rippling of waves on the pier and the stormy swelling of the sea against the harsh rocks. [–] The colourful nature descriptions accompany the bleak human destinies which the reader follows with excitement until the end.”
– Jari Olavi Hiltunen in Satakunnan Kansa newspaper

Request the English materials for ØRJA here

The Last Grudge

Max Seeck

The third installment in the NYT-bestselling series – Published in the US on February 7, 2023!

A prominent business executive Eliel Zetterborg is found brutally murdered in his home in Helsinki. The company he led has just announced drastic cutbacks and Zetterborg gained hundreds of enemies and death threats in the process.

But the murder motive become less clear, when the police finds out that the murderer had other targets as well. The only clue the police has is a photo of Zetterborg with three other men, whose faces are all scratched off. Who are the faceless men, and why can’t the police identify them? Are they other victims? Or something more sinister?

While Jessica Niemi suffers from a mental breakdown after her encounter with the witch coven, Jusuf gets a chance to lead the investigations and prove his skills as a police officer, while helping Jessica battle her demons that seem to come closer and closer…

Request the materials for THE LAST GRUDGE here

All The King’s Men

Elina Backman

Winner of the Storytel Audio book Award 2020 for the Best Crime Novel

Saana has been fired from her job as a click-bait journalist, so she decides to spend a summer with her aunt in a small town named Hartola. It sounds like a perfect opportunity to take it easy and recover. But when Saana begins to dig into the case of a teenage girl who died 30 years earlier, peace in the small town is shaken.

Meanwhile, in Helsinki, a fire-marked body is found at Suomenlinna Sea Fortress, and crime investigator Jan Leino and his team have a new case on their hands. However, the investigation isn’t going anywhere, and Jan fears that the murder at King’s Gate is just the beginning…

Saana and Jan continue working on their own cases until their paths cross – for more than one reason.

Sang

Elina Pitkäkangas

Winner of the Topelius Award 2023!

The state of Fusang is recovering from a war that ravaged the world. 16-year-old Kong Dawei, an earnest young man, is living in a poor mountain village and tries to pay his adopted siblings’ citizen dues by transporting contraband goods at night.

After a series of unfortunate events, Dawei ends up in the southern capital which is ruled by the cruel matriarch of the White Tiger Clan. When there is nothing else to lose, Dawei has only one goal: to get back to his loved ones, his brother Ren and his friend and love interest Dray– whatever it takes.

Sang is an addictive fantasy novel that travels through cold mountains and humid cities, noisy bazaars and opulent halls, and the world after the Black Rain, in which one’s value is measured in money.

Request the materials for SANG here

Leadership as Mastery: The Finnish Way

Asko Känsälä

Lead like a Finn! The Finnish way of leadership combines art and craftsmanship, like the great Finnish master architect Alvar Aalto.

“Leadership is often thought of as a quality of the individual, but in this LEADERSHIP AS MASTERY we learn it is more of an art form to be mastered. We develop to be an exceptional leader through cycles of practice and reflection, just like the mastery of any other complex skill.”
– Jeffrey K. Liker, PhD, author of international bestseller The Toyota Way

Request the English materials for LEADERSHIP AS MASTERY here