Rights & Brands
Adult Fiction & Non-Fiction
Catalogue
Spring 2025
About Rights & Brands
Rights & Brands is a 360° licensing and literary agency bringing Scandinavian rights and brands to a global arena. Starting from a strategic base in literature, art and design, R&B’s platform is built on knowledge, passion and people. Using all aspects of character representation and branding, from publishing and PR to licensing, merchandising and digital development, with a worldwide network of sub-agents and over 800 clients, R&B’s international insight and business capacity is unique.
www.rightsandbrands.com
facebook/rightsandbrands publishing@rightsandbrands.com
instagram/rightsandbrands
linkedin/rights&brands
Rights & Brands represents iconic Nordic brands, artists and authors and is the worldwide master agent on behalf of Moomin Characters. Other representation includes Sofie Sarenbrant & Carina Bergfeldt, Arne Dahl & Jonas Moström, Jenny Rogneby, Olli Jalonen, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Asko Sahlberg, Mads Peder Nordbo, Cristina Sandu, Petra Rautiainen, Arto Paasilinna (Estate), and Tove Jansson (Estate).
With its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden and local branches in Helsinki, Oslo, London and Tokyo, R&B was founded in 2016 by Moomin Characters and Bulls, combining over 70 years of licensing experience.
Rights & Brands
Rosenlundsgatan 31 118 63 Stockholm Sweden
Rights & Brands
Salmisaarenranta 7 L 00180 Helsinki Finland
Crime & Thriller The Follower by Sofie Sarenbrant p. 8
Narrative Non-Fiction To See a World in a Grain of Sand by Linda Liukas p. 32
Fiction The Golden Deer by Miina Supinen p. 15
Narrative Non-Fiction Tove And Her Music by Emma Klingenberg p. 33
Crime & Thriller Dog by Mads Peder Nordbo p. 4
Upmarket
is a
writer from Funen who has previously lived in Sweden, Germany and Greenland. He holds degrees in literature, communications and philosophy from the University of Southern Denmark and the University of Stockholm. The author of nine novels, he is also co-author of two thrillers together with Sara Blædel and which are optioned for TV. Nordbo’s acclaimed Greenland series was translated into 20 languages.
Dog
(Hund)
First published in Danish by Gutkind / 2025 / 391 pp.
The gripping opener to a brand-new series by the bestselling author of the Greenland series. A Top 10 bestseller in Denmark and Bog & Idé booksellers’ Book of the Month.
“An exciting and somewhat different crime novel ... The investigation is well- and realistically described ... If you like harsh, gruesome and exciting books, you just have to start with Dog.”
FINDALSKRIMISIDE.DK
“...well-written, the story is good... We’re definitely ready for more from the Praest series - if we dare.”
BOGBOBLER
“It’s all tied together in a well-told story that gives a lot of thoughts and emotions free rein... The Praest sisters are an interesting and likeable couple that I look forward to getting to know better.”
RANDI GLENSBO BLOG
A naked, enfeebled man appears at a Christmas market at the dilapidated Hesbjerg Manor on the island of Funen. His body bears fresh bite marks of what appears to be a large dog, and the man seems mentally absent. JRT, the joint psychological unit between the Region of Southern Denmark and Odense Police, is called in and the work of establishing the man’s identity and the circumstances around his injuries begins.
When the nameless man is examined the next day, scans reveal a gruesome reality behind his behaviour and it turns out that he has been the victim of a serious crime. When a new victim with similar injuries turns up near Skanderborg, the case is turned on its head and the terms “killer” and “victim” begin to merge.
Police Inspector Line Præst and her sister Ragnhild, a psychologist at the regional psychiatric centre, have to work more closely together, much to Line’s annoyance, and a new department at Odense Police is born.
The case spreads its ripples and anxiety runs deep. People begin to fear big dogs, and for Line and Ragnhild, the case takes a tragic and all too personal turn. Death is suddenly as close as the warm breath of a wild dog. What is it like to see your own death?
Dog will be followed up by Cross in early 2026, and Stone in 2027, with a further three books planned in the series.
READING MATERIAL
Danish edition & PDF
Sample translation (p. 1-81)
Synopses Books 1-3
Author letter
“The impact is devastating, and the plot expands widely ... The different directions of the plot gradually converge and take an unexpected dramatic turn that will keep you reading in great, disturbing stretches. A promising start to the new series.”
DANSK BIBLIOTEKS CENTER
MADS PEDER NORDBO (b. 1970)
Danish
© Jonas Schnack Krog
The Greenland series
The Girl Without Skin; Cold Fear; The Woman With the Death Mask
First published in Danish by Politikens / 2017, 2018, 2019
The bestselling Greenland series by Mads Peder Nordbo consists of The Girl Without Skin, Cold Fear and The Woman With the Death Mask. The trilogy plays out in the remote and arctic environment of Greenland, where Nordbo lived and worked between 2014-2019, employed at the town hall in Nuuk, where he worked closely with the mayor of the capital municipality.
Matthew Cave, the male protagonist of the series is a young journalist who has sought solitude in the Arctic after losing his wife and unborn daughter in a road accident. His mother is Danish, while his father was an American soldier at Thule Air Base. His father disappeared without a trace when Matthew was four years old; wanted for murder. The female protagonist, Tupaarnaq Siegstad, is a young Greenlander who has been in prison for the murder of her father and is haunted by a tough childhood. Both Matthew and Tupaarnaq are both hampered by their psychological scars, but through the three books they become increasingly united in the cases they become entangled in.
The series garnered Nordbo critical acclaim from readers and critics alike for his authentic and respectful rendering of Greenlandic society and its conditions, and the beautiful but unforgiving Arctic environment - a counterpoint to the brutal elements of the crimes in the storylines.
The Greenland series has been translated into 20 languages, including English, and has been optioned for a TV series.
Please get in touch with us for up-to-date rights information for your territory.
READING MATERIAL
Danish PDF 1-3
English translations 1-2
Synopses Books 1-3
Reviews
“The real pleasure in this slice of Scandi noir is the insight it gives into the cocktail of claustrophobia and remoteness that is life in Greenland. Here, even place names shimmer with poetry…”
OBSERVER, ON COLD FEAR
“Mads Peder Nordbo writes really well. It’s exciting, well-researched and different, and with really good characters.”
SARA BLÆDEL, BESTSELLING DANISH AUTHOR
“A grippingly atmospheric yarn… As danger mounts, the landscape, weather and people of the former Danish colony are piercingly observed. Chilling.”
SUNDAY TIMES
“While there are similarities to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, Nordbo’s writing is far more poetic. Though dazzled by the icecap’s beauty, he’s not blinded to the darkness of man.’”
SA WEEKEND
“The Girl Without Skin is large parts a classical crime combined with a thriller’s intensity—but just as much social criticism.”
VG, NORWAY
“Impressive descriptions of Greenlandic nature and bloodthirsty murders - a gripping and thrilling read.”
BUCHZENE, GERMANY
ARNE DAHL (b. 1963) is a writer, editor, and critic who has written nearly thirty books in a number of different series, in primarily the crime fiction genre. He has been awarded several prestigious awards such as the Deutscher Krimi Preis and the Ripper Award for his collected work. His books have been translated into 32 languages.
JONAS MOSTRÖM (b. 1973) is a writer and general practitioner. He is the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling series that follows psychiatrist and criminal profiler Nathalie Svensson and inspector Johan Axberg. The books have been translated into 11 languages. In 2017, Jonas won the Big Audio Book Prize for the novel Midnight Girls.
The Creator (Skaparen)
First published in Swedish by Bookmark / 2024 / 432 pp.
The opening instalment to new writing duo Arne Dahl and Jonas Moström’s True Fiction series. Shortlisted for the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Prize 2024 and a bestseller in Denmark.
Renowned crime novelist Tom Borg is grappling with a severe case of writer’s block, desperate to reignite his creative spark. In a bid for inspiration, he ventures into an underground club in central Stockholm, where he witnesses a murder eerily reminiscent of the plot he’s been struggling to pen.
Tom soon finds himself embroiled in a deadly game where the difference between fiction and reality is distorted. Where is the line between the two drawn? And is that something he really wants to find out?
Tom’s antagonist is the MMA-fighting Inspector Olivia Woolf. She carries her own twin inside her, has one blue eye and one green eye, and takes out her aggression on men who hurt women.
It is not long until Tom realizes that not only are the police after him, there is someone else closing in as well. A radical group with its own agenda seems to be behind the events that drove Tom on the run. Who really controls the narrative of the book Tom is working on, and who is to blame when real people get hurt?
“The Creator is a wild game of illusion at high speed.”
DAGENS NYHETER
“Arne Dahl is possibly the most thoughtful and playful contemporary Nordic crime writer. He also happens to be one of the most thrilling.”
IAN RANKIN
The Creator is the first part of the new series True Fiction, written by two award-winning crime writers at the top of their game. It is a thriller in the spirit of the Coen brothers: an irresistible page-turner with nail-biting tension, dark humor, and unforgettable characters. Tom, and Olivia will return in a standalone sequel, The Betrayer, in spring 2026.
SHORTLISTED CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2024
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
Full ENG translation
Synopsis
RIGHTS
Danish (Lindhardt & Ringhof) 1-3
Finnish (Into)
German (Bastei Luebbe) 1-3
Greek (Metaixmio)
Polish (under offer)
Portuguese (Dom Quixote)
“A skillfully packed detective story that highlights contemporary issues as threats to both climate and democracy. A top-notch page-turner with a cliffhanger that hints that now we have only scratched the surface - more has to come.”
ANETTE STOLT / BOOKSTAGRAM
© Kajsa Göransson
MOSTRÖM (b. 1973) is a Swedish author who also works as a general practitioner in Stockholm. The hospital environment plays a large role in his crime novels about Nathalie Svensson, Sweden’s foremost expert on psychopaths and a member of the National Criminal Service’s criminal profile group, where Inspector Johan Axberg also reoccurs.
PUBLISHERS
Bulgaria (Enthusiast)
Czech (Albatros)
Danish (Gyldendal; People’s)
Dutch (AmboAnthos)
Estonian (Mustamäe)
Finnish (Gummerus)
German (Ullstein)
Hungarian (Alexandra)
Norwegian (Bonnier Norsk Forlag)
Polish (Czarna Owca; BookBeat)
The Queen
(Drottningen)
First published in Swedish by Norstedts / 2024 / 400 pp.
The Queen is the eleventh stand-alone book in Jonas Moström’s popular and award-winning crime series about psychiatrist Nathalie Svensson and criminal inspector Johan Axberg. The series has sold over a million copies and has been published in more than ten countries.
Immediately after the inauguration of a controversial factory in Sundsvall, Sweden’s Minister for Climate disappears without a trace. The following morning, he is found buried in a dung heap on a pig farm in a small village in another part of Sweden. Strangely, his face has been eaten by a type of ant normally found in Africa and Asia. The police’s suspicions are immediately directed at a group of climate activists, and soon Nathalie Svensson, Johan Axberg and the other members of the Swedish national profiling group are called in, even though Johan is supposed to be on paternity leave.
At Stockholm Royal Palace, Her Majesty the Queen is informed of the murder. The macabre news forces her to confront something from the past she would rather forget, and to venture into a reality where only the strongest survive.
When another victim is found and the investigation intensifies, Nathalie and Johan find it difficult to keep the passion alive. In pursuit of what appears to be the country’s most ruthless serial killer ever, they are forced into a seemingly overpowering chaos, full of individuals with unimaginable agendas.
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
Synopsis
“The story is exciting and imaginative with current societal issues woven in.”
BIBLIOTEKSTJÄNST
The Predator (Rovdjur)
Norstedts / 2023 / 423 pp.
The shocking abduction of a child from Nathalie Svensson’s local playground in Uppsala, moments before she and her own baby son, Noah arrive on the scene, unexpectedly pulls Nathalie alongside Johan Axberg into the hunt for a kidnapper.
Dead End
(Blindspår)
Norstedts / 2022 / 462 pp.
Actress Helena Melvinder is found brutally stabbed to death in her home, the only clue left is the wooden figurine that Helena’s son Elias, who has Down syndrome, carves. It’s believed to represent the murderer. As Elias finishes his work, the noose around the killer tightens.
JONAS
© Kajsa
Göransson
SOFIE SARENBRANT (b. 1978) made her literary debut in 2010 and has since then become one of the biggest crime authors in the Nordics. She is best known for her modern and creative series following police detective Emma Sköld and her team in Stockholm. The series has sold 6,5 million copies worldwide and been translated into 17 languages to date.
The Emma Sköld series was Sweden’s bestselling domestic series of 2023. The Parasite was nominated Crime Novel of the Year award the same year. Sofie Sarenbrant has won Crime Writer of the Year in 2019, 2020 and 2022 for the series and also a hat-trick of the Nextory E-Book Award.
The Follower
(Följeslagaren)
First published in Swedish by Bookmark / May 2025 / ca 400 pp.
A missing woman, a sister’s courage, and the feeling of being followed. Sofie Sarenbrant’s bestselling Emma Sköld series continues with a spinetingling story that plunges readers into a story where the line between safety and danger becomes blurred.
A woman goes missing without a trace in the leafy suburb of Bromma. There are no leads or a body, but the question remains: why did her husband wait three days before reporting her missing? And then a macabre clue is found in a neighbouring garden.
Detective Inspector Emma Sköld gives the case her all. On her own initiative, Emma’s sister Josefin, on summer leave from the police academy, offers to help Emma with the investigation. Little does Josefin know what she has got herself into.
The Follower is the twelfth standalone book in Sweden’s most-sold series of 2023. Sofie Sarenbrant combines societal debate and sensitive topics together with her signature nailbiting intrigue.
2025 sees Sofie Sarenbrant celebrating 15 years as a published author. Next year she will be launching a brand-new series featuring a new protagonist and millieu as a lead title for Forum in autumn 2026.
“Are you being followed, or just paranoid? And do you dare to look in the mirror and face the truth?”
“Enjoy Sofie Sarenbrant’s pace, the smart dialogue and the chills down your spine.”
FEMINA DENMARK
“When it comes to telling stories about the superficial present, there are few who can beat Sofie Sarenbrant.”
LOTTA OLSSON, DAGENS NYHETER
SWEDEN’S BESTSELLING SERIES OF 2023
READING MATERIAL
Sample translation
Synopsis
Author letter
RIGHTS
Danish (People’s)
Finnish (WSOY)
Film & TV (option)
“Sarenbrant once again manages to inject strong tension into the crime novel with a skillfully constructed plot.”
KULTTUURITOIMITUS, FINLAND
“As usual, Sarenbrant has a drive in her storytelling and conveys current topics in her themes and plot construction which creates a suspense and, in a very skillful way, draws the reader into the story. This is a Swedish social debate-crime novel of the highest quality.”
BIBLIOTEKSTJÄNST, ON THE PARASITE
© Magnus Ragnvid
The
Parasite (Parasiten)
Bookmark / 2024 / 400 pp.
It is a hot summer day when the burnt remains of a body are found by Drottningholm Palace, the private residence of the royal family, just outside of Stockholm. Next to the victim, the police find a death list with five names. The last one reads Emma Sköld.
An investigation is immediately started. At the same time, a twenty-year-old case unrolls where a mother went to the emergency room with her infant but ended up in detention. What does the past have to do with the victim found by Drottningholm? Now it is up to Emma and her colleagues to stop the killer before more names are crossed of the list. Including the final one, Emma herself.
The Parasite is the eleventh book in the bestselling series following detective Emma Sköld and her team in Stockholm. In her characteristic way, Sarenbrant portrays topical issues while at the same time creating suspense that keeps readers on their toes all the way to the end. The Parasite is about a life shattered overnight, revenge, hurtful sibling relationships and a family involved in a tragedy with catastrophic consequences.
The Soulmate
(Själsfränden)
Bookmark / 2022 / 442 pp.
Stockholm is exploding in the warm colours of autumn. It is a striking view, but police detective Emma Sköld’s eyes fall on something else. A woman is balancing on the wrong side of the railing of a major bridge, holding a baby in her arms.
Emma must prevent the woman and infant from falling twenty-six meters down into the sea and a certain death. What has led her to this point? Emma Sköld and her colleagues face an intricate investigation in their most urgent case yet.
The Soulmate is the tenth book the popular crime series about police detective Emma Sköld. Sofie Sarenbrant uniquely weaves together current and sensitive contemporary issues into the plot, and explores topics such as human dignity, prejudice and gaslighting. With short chapters, a straightforward language and strong cliffhangers, Sarenbrant’s storytelling has a unique drive and urgency. The result is an equally important and thrilling crime story, impossible to put down.
The Guardian Angel (Skyddsängeln)
Bookmark / 2021 / 400 pp.
The cherry trees are in full bloom, but police detective Emma Sköld is having trouble enjoying the approaching Easter holiday. Seven months have passed since her close colleague, Krille, disappeared without a trace. She is determined to find him, dead or alive.
While police finally locate the debt collector who was the last one to see Krille alive, Emma is presented with a strange murder. An elderly man has been found dead in an abandoned mental institution. When his identity is revealed, Emma becomes obsessed with solving the case.
The Guardian Angel is the ninth book in the immensely popular detective series about Emma Sköld. As always, the story has a strong connection to current social issues. The Guardian Angel explores topics such as loneliness, addiction, and mental illness. It was the most listened to book of the year on Storytel in 2021.
“Sofie Sarenbrant’s crime novel The Soulmate begins with a real sick-to-thestomach scene and the feverish pace is kept up throughout the novel.”
AFTONBLADET
SÖNDAG
350,000 COPIES
SOFIE SARENBRANT (b. 1978) is one of Sweden’s most beloved and successful authors. Her books have been translated into 17 languages and sold 6,5 million copies to date. She was awarded the prestigious Swedish Crime Writer of the Year award in 2019, 2020 and 2022, and the Emma Sköld series was Sweden’s bestselling series of 2023.
CARINA BERGFELDT (b. 1980) is an award-winning author, journalist, and one of the most popular TV hosts in Sweden. Today she is most known for her celebrated talk show, Carina Bergfeldt. She has also published both fiction and non-fiction books, with translation rights sold to 15 countries.
Good Friday
(Långfredagen)
Bookmark / 2024 / 400 pp.
It’s Good Friday and the season premiere of the popular talk show Frida-y. Spotlights fill the stage, the audience sits quietly in anticipation for what the evening has to offer. Backstage, a controversial guest is waiting, invited personally by the host Frida von Engen. She wants to make sure to get high ratings for her comeback on screen and to once and for all consolidate her role as the most intriguing host with the most exciting show.
“There is certainly no shortage of spectacular ingredients in this exciting page-turner (...). Fast-paced with colourful characters and dark secrets that are revealed in the open. A thriller that is likely to end up high on the bestseller lists.”
INGALILL MOSANDER, AFTONBLADET
“An exciting thriller.”
BIBLIOTEKSTJÄNST
“A real pageturner.”
TV4 MORNING NEWS
But in the middle of the live broadcast, a masked person emerges from the shadows. A bomber vest is hidden under the hoodie. There is no doubt that the threat is real: ”The doors are locked, no one gets out of here. If you interrupt the broadcast, everyone dies.”
Good Friday is the standalone sequel to The Birthday, which was released in September 2023 and topped the sales charts. With a focus on fast-paced suspense and complex relationships, Sofie Sarenbrant and Carina Bergfeldt have created another world-class thriller.
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
Full ENG translation
Synopsis
RIGHTS
Danish (People’s)
Finnish (WSOY)
Norwegian (Cappelen Damm)
The Birthday
(Födelsedagen)
Bokförlaget Forum / 2023 / 405 pp.
It’s a beautiful morning when Samuel’s mother, his father and his new stepmother gather to celebrate his seventh birthday. Together they arrange the cake, light the candles and head to Samuel’s room singing. But as the door opens, silence falls. Samuel’s bed is empty, the window wide open.
Police are quickly called and a heavily publicized search operation begins. But as the hours go by, questions and suspicions arise – the atmosphere between ex-wife, father and stepmother thickens. When the corpse of a family member is discovered, the situation escalates. All three would have an interest to get Samuel out of the way, but their stories just don’t add up. What really happened the night before?
Awarded Forum’s Platinum Book with over 200,000 copies sold within two years of publication. SERIES SOLD
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
Full ENG translation
Synopsis
RIGHTS
Danish (People’s)
Estonian (Pegasus)
Finnish (WSOY)
Film & TV (Nordisk Film, option)
Norwegian (Cappelen Damm)
© Magnus Ragnvid
JENNY ROGNEBY (b. 1974) is an author and criminologist. For seven years she worked professionally as a Criminal Investigator at Stockholm City Police Department. The work inspired her to start writing The ’Leona’ Series, a Swedish best-selling crime series that has been translated to 14 languages. In 2022, Jenny Rogneby launched the first book in her standalone trilogy featuring mediator Angela Lans in the lead.
“It is a difficult balancing act the author has set out on, but she not only manages to do so, but also with bravura. [...] With a sense of subtle nuances, Rogneby shows the consequences of the crime, both physically and mentally, as well as legally and criminally, while at the same time managing to keep the reader in an iron grip. [...] An extraordinary reading experience. 5/5”
BIBLIOTEKSTJÄNST, ON THE MEDIATOR
The Victim (Offret)
First published in Swedish by Ordfront / 2024 / 372 pp.
The Victim is the third standalone part in the series about mediator Angela Lans. As always in Rogneby’s writing, we not only follow a thrilling case, but are also faced with unexpected ethical questions and encounter worlds we have never seen before.
Hanna Lans wakes up in the middle of the night by two masked intruders breaking into the villa where her husband and two children are sleeping – a nightmare that quickly becomes a death trap when the house catches fire. The perpetrators are sentenced to life imprisonment for arson. Seven years later, Hanna needs to find the strength to face the men who ruined her life again in mediation.
Mediator Angela Lans, Hanna’s sister, handles the charged conversations between victim and perpetrator. But new, shocking facts emerge about the case and overthrow everything Angela had planned and hoped for.
Meanwhile, Angela returns to her own past and the devastating internal investigation that caused her to quit the police force.
The Victim is a gripping crime drama that asks the question how far we are prepared to go for someone we love.
“Jenny Rogneby also skilfully avoids ending up with clichés and manages to make the language genuine and striking.”
BIBLIOTEKSTJÄNST
The Witness (Vittnet)
Ordfront / 2023 / 485 pp.
As a child, Ina became the only witness to the murder of her mother, committed by her father. Now, the teenaged Ina wants to confront him. Mediator Angela Lans is brought on to steer the charged conversations between father and daughter. But it seems someone is trying to sabotage the mediation.
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
RIGHTS
All rights available
The Mediator (Blindspår)
Ordfront / 2022 / 486 pp.
Full ENG translation
A young woman is brutally assaulted in her home; her attacker is soon identified and convicted. As his release approaches, mediator Angela Lans is brought in to mediate between victim and perpetrator. But when the meetings take an unexpected turn, Angela decides to investigate what really happened that night.
© Mikael Eriksson
EMILSSON (b. 1973) is one of Sweden’s most popular feelgood writers. Her books have sold over 300,000 copies and have been translated into Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and German to date. She debuted in 2014 with Äta kakan och ha den kvar and has since published seven more novels in the same genre. A third book in the ‘Julia’ series, Spring According to Julia, will be published in 2025.
PUBLISHERS OF THE ’JULIA GRAHN’ SERIES
Danish (Cicero)
Finnish (Karisto)
German (Fischer)
Norwegian (Cappelen Damm)
Christman According to Julia
(Julen enligt Julia)
Printz Publishing / 2021 / 291 pp.
An entertaining rom-com full of hilarity and finding love when you least expect it set in snowy Visby, Gotland.
The Tone-Deaf Musical Society Presents
(Tondövas riksförbund presenterar)
First published in Swedish by Printz Publishing / 2024 / 356 pp.
The Tone-Deaf Musical Society Presents is a standalone, feelgood novel about forgotten dreams, new friendships and the unique magic of creating something together.
When Magda Englund’s son leaves home she feels lonely again for the first time in a very long time. The nest is empty, her job as a secondary school teacher ticks along, and all her friends seem to be busy with their own lives.
To ward off the loneliness, Magda decides to realise one of her long-forgotten dreams: to stage a musical. Together with Joakim, the school’s secretive music teacher, Magda forms The Tone-Deaf Musical Society, a motley crew of troubled souls who, at first glance, seem to have little in common with each other. But during rehearsals they find common ground and unlikely friendships begin to form.
As their opening night approaches, a new member joins the group and everything is suddenly turned upside-down, opening up old wounds. Can Magda face up to her past or will she be forced to let down her new friends?
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
“Feelgood at its best”
KULTURLADYN
Sample translation 50 pp. Synopsis
RIGHTS
Norwegian (Cappelen Damm)
“A carefully composed story that contains both humour and seriousness, and a large dose of warmth. The characters feel real, and nothing is as obvious or predictable as one might think. A really lovely feelgood!”
HYLLAN
BLOG, SWEDEN
July According to Julia
(Juli enligt Julia)
Printz Publishing / 2023 / 350 pp.
New couple Julia and Petter return to the place where they met but in the summer heat, mishaps arise and relationships are put to the test.
Spring Feelings on Gotland
(Vårkänslor på Gotländska)
Printz Publishing / 2025 / 325 pp.
Love - both old and new - is in the air as Julia and Petter look forward to their Easter getaway to Gotland.
© Anna Rut Fridholm
KRISTIN
is a Finnish writer with Sámi heritage, and a semi-professional Thai boxer. She holds a MA in Comparative Literature and debuted in 2020 with her novel Shadow Boxer (Like, 2020), about sexual abuse in the sporting world, which won Finland’s ‘Sports Book of the Year’ and received a nomination for the Torchbearer Prize. One Half was published in March 2024 to positive reviews.
One Half
(Puolikas)
First published in Finnish by LIKE / 2024 / 283 pp.
“For me, Sámi was not just another language, it didn’t feel foreign in the same way as other languages, but it was foreign, wild as a river.”
Ibbá returns to her family’s ancestral home in Kuttura, where she begins to ask questions of her ageing parents, and why she never learned to speak Sámi. She begins unravelling the past, going back to the postwar years when Sámi children from remote villages were separated from their families by being forced into boarding schools for most of the year. As Ibbá uncovers her family’s secrets, she has to ask herself what Sámi means to her.
One Half is a moving novel about the postwar generations of Sámi children, today’s urban Sámi identity, and reconnecting to one’s own roots.
“One Half addresses the question of identity in a versatile and compelling way. For the majority population, the novel opens up on Sámi history and the overtly colonial role of Finnish boarding schools, and the multitudes of lived experiences within the borders of a single country.”
SUOMEN KUVALEHTI
“A beautiful novel about Ibbá’s personal journey into her family history and, at the same time, her own identity.”
KULTTUURITOIMITUS
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Sample translation 50 pp.
Synopsis
RIGHTS
All rights available
”Works of literary merit and nuance, such as One Half, are necessary - and a joy to read.”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT
INGA MAGGA (b. 1983)
© Toni
Härkönen
THELLA JOHNSON (b. 1979) is a journalist and writer raised in Stockholm by a Finnish mother and a Swedish father. She was previously Swedish Radio’s correspondent in Helsinki. Her radio documentaries about the Troubles, the civil war in Sierra Leone and labour conditions in Chinese quarries and jewellery factories have all received praise. She is also a musician and runs an independent record label together with her husband. Peace is her first novel.
Peace
(Fred)
First published in Swedish by Norstedts / 2023 / 414 pp.
A fascinating, colourful novel about Finland and Sweden through the lens of an unforgettable family.
With an angry mob raging outside, Elina Kansa spends a few, intense days locked in a convenience store in Kemi together with her Iraqi stepfather and a stranger, whom she involves in the vivid retelling of her family’s turbulent past. This is the story of three generations and two nations on both sides of the Baltic, the inland sea with the brackish water. Here we meet grandfather Tapani, whose fate was sealed by a roach trapped in a shoe and an encounter with the bearer of a pair of small red boots. We are also introduced to mother Marjatta, who in her search for happiness moved across the sea not once but twice, and finally granddaughter, Elina who becomes our companion through this flamboyant family epic that takes us from the last days of WW2 to the refugee crisis of 2015.
Peace is a tender portrayal of an unforgettable family and the post-war people of Sweden and Finland, two countries close as siblings. It is also a Bildungsroman set against the backdrop of both major and minor world events, exploring the human effects of wartime and peacetime.
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
“This gently humorous intergenerational novel is about building peace and living in peacetime in a multi-generational way. It also reminds us that peace must be actively built in order to be maintained.”
SIVUMERKKEJÄ BLOG, FINLAND
“Oh, what a delightful epic novel to disappear into. Thella Johnson is such a zestful and engaging storyteller, making you wish the book would never end.”
VI LÄSER
“A veritable cornucopia.”
MAAILMANKIRJAT, FINLAND
Finnish edition & PDF Synopsis
RIGHTS
Finnish (Johnny Kniga)
“Peace is a breathtaking story where comedy and seriousness intertwine, but there is a dark undertone in the book that deepens as it goes on. I am most impressed by Thella Johnson’s language. It swings naturally between poetry and fiction in a way that sometimes brings Monika Fagerholm to mind, but Johnson has a voice all of her own, just like that stubborn neighbouring country that is the main character of this novel.”
SWEDISH RADIO CULTURE NEWS
The Golden Deer
(Kultainen peura)
First published in Finnish by Otava / 2024 / 416 pp.
Braiding superstition, language, and illicit love with a sprinkling of mystical fantasy, Miina Supinen delivers an absorbing and spirited narrative in her fifth novel.
Her adult fiction breakthrough novel, Liha tottelee kuria [Jelly Control] (WSOY, 2007) earned her critical acclaim as an ’unwilling humourist’. Her works have previously been translated into Czech, Danish, German.
1880s Karelia: defying societal obligations to marry, Mathilda ‘Tilda’ Sommer instead leaves the comfort of her childhood home in Vyborg for a teacher’s seminary in a small town on the northern shores of the great Lake Ladoga. There, Tilda quickly befriends another trainee teacher, Jelena Päästäinen, a mysterious young Karelian woman who is a ward of her uncle, Kiril, a shadowy businessman alleged to associate with dark forces. As an illicit love between the two women begins to bud, they investigate the suspicious death of a local maid and are drawn into a bigger adventure that sets them on a course towards danger.
Abundant with mysticism, joyful humour, and spellbinding history, The Golden Deer reinvents the historical novel, with coiled motifs reminiscent of The Essex Serpent, the adventure of Madeleine’s Miller’s Kirke, and life and love under patriarchal limitations as in Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Sample translation 72 pp.
“Pages that ooze with joy.”
KARJALAINEN NEWSPAPER
“The Golden Deer shows that Miina Supinen deserves the magic cloak of a revered storyteller. She is clearly of Karelian storyteller stock.”
SAVON SANOMAT NEWSPAPER
“Rich and rewarding…”
KIRJAVINKIT BLOG
“Skillful and vivid.”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT NEWSPAPER
Synopsis
Author Letter
“I’m quite sure that in the old days, women, too, used to have fun together. In Finnish novels, their lives are often portrayed as horrible,” Supinen says. [...] I jokingly invented a sort of genre of my own, ‘Karelian gothic’, she says, laughing. If a gothic novel can have lovely maidens and their very strange families and ghosts, why not a Karelian one, she muses.”
AUTHOR INTERVIEW, HELSINGIN SANOMAT
”A refreshing historical novel.”
MAASEUDEN TULEVAISUUS NEWSPAPER
MIINA SUPINEN (b. 1976) is a Finnish journalist, creative writing teacher, and author of five novels, two story collections, a music biography, and two children’s middle-grade series.
© Sabrina Bqain / Otava
(b. 1983) was born in St. Petersburg into a family of artists. At the age of eight, she moved to Turku, Finland, with her parents. Her long-standing love of reading and writing and the magic of languages influenced Soudakova to write fiction and her dayjob teaching French, Russian and Finnish as a second language.
Wings of Sorrow
(Haikara levittää siipensä)
First published in Finnish by Atena / 2024 / 335 pp.
A moving novel about two siblings torn apart by a dictatorship.
“This is one of those novels which deals with terrible, difficult themes but despite - or perhaps, even because of this - you can but love it. The kind of book that is the reason for reading at all.”
KIRSIN KIRJANURKKA BLOG
“Every ambitious novel which seeks to increase our understanding of our neighbours to the east is essential at this time. As is this one.”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT
1995. A town in Belarus. Andréi is ten when his sister Sveta is born into the torn family. The father’s prison sentence under the authoritarian regime drives Andréi’s mother and grandmother to drink and Andréi has to care for Sveta and himself, loving protecting and comforting his little sister.
When a Belarusian language teacher takes Andréi under her wing, to guide him towards a better future, he decides to leave his home country. After their grandmother passes away, Andréi makes sure that Sveta can live with their uncle, an opponent of the regime. There, Sveta does not receive love, but she learns to love Belarus, to speak the language and to fight for the freedom of their country. She graduates as a journalist and instead of writing propaganda, she creates an electronic news platform to provide people with the truth.
With the presidential elections in 2020, the turbulence in the country increases and protests against the regime end in violence and imprisonment of civilians. Sveta’s work becomes increasingly dangerous and she eventually has to flee and leave everything behind, just like her brother fifteen years before. As Sveta crosses the border, a flock of storks flies above her in the sky. She makes her way to Finland, where she will at last reunite with her beloved brother Andréi.
In Wings of Sorrow, Anna Soudakova renders a suspenseful family saga set against the backdrop of Belarus’ recent history. Skilfully intertwining the different character’s portraits spanning four generations, she recounts in equally beautiful and powerful language their suppression and eternal struggle, as well as the profound humanity of individuals and the loving relationship between the siblings and their shared aspiration for freedom.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition and PDF
Sample translation 45 pp.
Synopsis
“Interestingly, Soudakova uses the Belarusian language in her book as a kind of powerful tool, thereby contributing to the renaissance of the language. Hopefully, the book will also increase [Finnish] readers’ understanding of the situation in Belarus.” KULTTUURITOIMITUS
© Veikko Somerpuro / Atena
ANNA SOUDAKOVA
HAAHTELA (b. 1972) is known as a master of novellas. His award-winning work spans 16 titles of fiction, in which the author creates a wondrous world that enchants its readers. Besides his career in writing, Haahtela also works as a psychiatrist and a deacon at the Finnish orthodox church in Helsinki.
Haahtela received the Pro Finlandia Media in 2024 in recognition of his cultural contributions to Finnish literature. His works have been translated into several languages, including Estonian, German, Lithuanian, and Russian.
“Seldom has loss been so beautifully portrayed as in Haahtela’s novel.”
YLE CULTURE
The Soul Painter’s Evening
(Sielunpiirtäjän ilta)
First published in Finnish by Otava / February 2025 / 237 pp.
A captivating, timeless novel that conjures up a painter’s inner life by the Finlandia- and Runeberg Prize-nominated author.
An unnamed, aging Master painter in Golden Age Holland works on a painting he forbids anyone from seeing before ascending in the evening up to his attic to record his thoughts in his diary. On the encouragement of his friends, the Master agrees to take on one last apprentice, Jacob, a promising young man who is commissioned to paint the portrait of a wealthy silk merchant. Supervising Jacob’s instinctive brushtrokes, the Master begins to feel the return of a long-lost spark of joy in his heart. But one fateful night, a devastating fire breaks out in the town and sets the course of everyone’s lives on a new course.
In this intimate and beautiful narrative that glows like a flame in the darkness, Joel Haahtela, in his pared-back style, renders a beautiful, succinct work in which the laws of light and the art of painting are most often found in the proximity of another person.
“A small story that grows bigger in Haahtela’s hands.”
KULTTUURITOIMITUS
A Yearning for Truth: A Trilogy
Otava / 2024 / 554 pp. / Finnish edition and PDF
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition and PDF
English synopsis
Sample translation 45pp.
A trilogy of novellas transports the reader to a monastery in the wintery Pyrenees, a Greek island inhabited by hermetic monks, and the ancient myths of Jerusalem.
It is the journey of a world-fumbling seeker deep into the core of humanity, to the boundaries of worlds and larger-than-life questions.
The volume includes Haahtela’s absorbing and acclaimed works, Adèle’s Question (2019), The Ability to Breathe (2020), and Jacob’s Ladder (2022).
“The most significant gift of Haahtela’s words and sentences is that they leave so much space in the text that the reader finds themselves there.”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT, ON JACOB’S LADDER
JOEL
© Dorit Salutskij
CRISTINA SANDU (b. 1989) is a writer and translator, born in Helsinki to a Finnish-Romanian family. Sandu speaks seven languages and currently lives in the UK. Her first novel, The Whale Called Goliat (2017), was nominated for the Finlandia Prize. The Union of Synchronised Swimmers (2019) received the Toisinkoinen Literary Prize. Sandu’s novels have been translated into 8 languages to date.
The Danish Expedition
(Tanskalainen retkikunta)
Otava / 2024 / 367 pp.
The much-awaited third novel by Finlandia Prize-nominee and author of The Union of Synchonrised Swimmers, Cristina Sandu.
Nicaragua, 1923: A group of Danish emigrants embark on foot with their mules in the pouring rain on a trip across the mountains and the jungle to their promised land, Río Blanco, where they hope to grow coffee and make a better life for themselves.
The Union of Synchronised Swimmers
(Vesileikit)
Otava / 2019 / 128 pp.
READING MATERIAL
(THE DANISH EXPEDITION)
Finnish edition & PDF
English translation (unedited)
Synopsis
RIGHTS
(THE UNION OF SYNCHRONISED SWIMMERS)
English, World excl. CA (Scribe)
English, Canada (Book*hug)
Spanish, World (Twin Books)
Dutch (Orlando)
RIGHTS
(THE WHALE CALLED GOLIATH)
French (Robert Laffont)
Romanian (Cartea Romaneasca Ed.)
Catalan (Nits Blanques)
Spanish, World (Twin Brooks)
But the soil proves impossible to cultivate, and with the sudden death of the Nicaraguan president, the community’s support from the state comes to an end. The colony’s founders walk off with the collective funds to build their own business, leaving a strained atmosphere behind. Mere months later, treachery, revenge, hunger, disease, and death have destroyed the community’s dream and, for some, the colony experiment ends up in tragedy.
The Danish community’s paths continue crossing throughout a civil war and World War II, spanning across decades and generations. Carefully drawn portraits of the families and their journeys tell a story of belonging, cultural ties, broken dreams, and the continued hope of finding a place to settle, told with Sandu’s distinctive powerful language wielded with a light touch.
Six girls grow up on a piece of land between two rivers, belonging to no state. Swimming is their passion, but also a way to reach out to the world. As a team of synchronised swimmers, they perform skilful tricks in and underwater. Far away in Helsinki, Anita falls in love with Spiderman. In California, onboard a fishing boat, Paulina acquires the ingredients for her homeland’s traditional soup. On a Caribbean island, Betty gambles away all her money.
The stories of young rootless women, suffering from undefined feelings of longing, come together in a dazzling multifaceted novella, reaching across the world.
The Union of Synchronised Swimmers was awarded the Toisinkoinen Literature Prize for second novels.
“The writing is as graceful as the movements in the river they so elegantly swim in […] A small punchy, almost pocket-sized literary work of art, it’s somewhat offbeat from your regular novel. Read conscientiously to grasp unspoken atmospheres and clues between the lines.”
IRISH EXAMINER
© Gloria Ruiz
JUKKA VIIKILÄ (b. 1973) is a writer and playwright from Helsinki. He has graduated from the Theater Academy and written numerous works of fiction, poetry, short prose and novels.Viikilä is one of the three authors who has been awarded Finlandia twice in history, for both his novels, Watercolors from a Seaside City (2016) and Heavenly Reception (2021).
Sandcastles
(Hiekkalinnat)
First published in Finnish by Otava / 2024 / 171 pp.
The two-time Finlandia prizewinner’s profoundly beautiful, tragicomic account of love, sex, loyalty, and joy.
A woman in her thirties leaves Helsinki to move into her late father’s house in the beach town of Pärnu, Estonia. During her third summer there, she meets a considerably older Finnish architect, who could be her father. Two longing souls seem to have found each other.
They walk on the beach, smoke in the garden, enjoy drinks and have sex. The summer becomes an eternal moment, night and day are no longer defined, endless conversations on love, fear, the past and the future are held and two become one.
While she writes a novel - an exhaustive account of the wonders and horrors of love - he builds a vacation house for his family in Pärnu. One day he leaves for a short trip home to Helsinki.
“An intelligent and passionate love story that goes deeper than those of, say, Kjell Westö...”
DEMOKRAATTI
“An analytically cool reflection on love.”
TURUN SANOMAT
“Viikilä’s latest novel fulfills great expectations - Sandcastles deals with the theme of love with a unique depth.”
SATAKUNNAN KANSA
“The magic of Sandcastles lies in the untold things.”
SUOMEN KUVALEHTI
Sixty years later, the woman lives by herself in a labyrinthine apartment in Helsinki, her hometown, which does no longer feel like home, instead has almost become unrecognizable to her. Just like her own life, where many (things) have disappeared. What remains is the light of a match-sized relationships that glows brightly through the years.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Sample translation 35 pp. Synopsis
RIGHTS
Option: French (Gallimard) All rights available
”Juhani said this is a parallel world where he can live as a better man. The sad paradox of long relationships, he continued, is that familiarity does not bring one closer to another but that the uncertainty increases. In long love relationships, surrendering to the passion of kissing is rare, while with a stranger everything can be infinitely easy.”
Big Wet Secret
(Suuri Märkä Salaisuus)
ting at Helsinki’s Theater Academy. He has spent three months in an artist’s residency program in London and performed in New York.
Hallikainen’s novels have been nominated for numerous literary prizes and he was made ‘Helsinki’s Writer of the Year 2023’. Big Wet Secret was awarded both Kalevi Jäntti Prize and Toisinkoinen Literary Award in 2023.
For his outstanding work, Hallikainen was received the Helsinki Artist Award 2024.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Synopsis
ENG sample translations: Big Wet Secret 60 pp. / Canyon 50 pp.
RIGHTS
All rights available
”Hallikainen’s debut was a linguistic delight, but this novelty takes richness even further. In the work colored by class sorrow, there is a certain joy: it is uncompromising in language, structurally sound yet free. The narrator is electric, a realm of imagination in a world of twigs, or as he puts it: ‘Imagination is all I have’. ”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT
First published in Finnish by Otava / 2023 / 392 pp.
This coming-of-age story is a masterful depiction of class differences, adolescent intensities and insecurities, awakening homosexuality and devastating alcoholism.
The boy spends his nights watching age-inappropriate Hollywood movies from the 90’s, numbing his loneliness with candy. He is embarrassed by his situation and doesn’t want to share it with anyone. Instead, he prays.
The boy’s father passes away, he becomes a teenager and falls in love with one of his classmates, The Athlete, who, unlike him, comes from a wealthy family. The school is situated in eastern Helsinki and surrounded by suburbs with great inequality in income, only referred to with postal codes. The schoolkids, all anonymous and only known by epithets, come from very different backgrounds. Despite of his feeling of otherness among his well-off classmates, the boy makes friends and, with them, gets acquainted with alcohol and sex. He quickly develops an ever-growing interest in tobacco, booze, and men.
Hyper-realistic in its detail, the novel is an intense, violent, corporeal, and sensual story of growing up poor in the 1990’s eastern Helsinki. The anonymous narrators’ voice, merging the boy protagonist and the adult he later became, is stunningly achieved: natural, effortless, and believable.
Canyon
(Kanjoni)
First published in Finnish by Otava / 2020 / 185 pp.
A fiery, frenetic debut novel that turns into a literary hall of mirrors constantly surprising its reader.
A young man is desperately in love with his school bully. When an unstable relationship ends, the narrator escapes into an obsessive vortex of webcam sex. Through a miraculous coincidence, the videos open a heady gateway to a new life in the heat of Los Angeles. The narrator’s deep yearning for love takes the reader on an unpredictable journey filled with shadows and poetic expressiveness.
Simultaneously uninhibitedly physical, unabashedly funny and profoundly tragic, Canyon is a novel that creates an uncommonly passionate and irresistible relationship with the reader.
“Canyon may be seen as an exaggeration of zeitgeist: we lay all day at the computer, in search for others, obsessively pampering ourselves. Canyon convinces and impresses.”
SUOMEN KUVALEHTI
“Hallikainen builds a dizzying, downward spiral in which tragedy and comedy intertwine.”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT
NIKO HALLIKAINEN (b. 1989) is a writer and performance poet from Helsinki. He teaches creative wri-
© Jonne Räsänen
ELIN WILLOWS (b. 1982) is a journalist and author. She grew up in Sweden and now lives in Finland. Her first novel Inlands was nominated for Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize and Swedish Authors’ Association’s Katapult Prize. The film adaptation of Inlands premiered in 2020. Elin Willow’s laconic storytelling captures the indecisiveness of our time.
Ladders (Stegar)
First published in Swedish by Natur & Kultur / 2024 / 180 pp.
We have rituals to help deal with grief. An obituary, a wreath, a grave. But what happens when you don’t share in such a community, when grief becomes lonely and secretive?
“A stylish and concise novel about the transition between teenager and adult where the explosive emotions can only be sensed between the lines.”
SVERIGES RADIO
The woman in Ladders is a recently separated mother of two. She loses a man who has started to get close to her, perhaps more close than she had realized. But their relationship has been a secret to everyone around them. In strong fragments, the story is drawn of what happened and how loss transforms a person. How void holds on to its opposite, and makes what remains left shine ever so brightly.
Ladders is the final part in Elin Willow’s thematic novel trilogy that began with Inlands and continued with New Names. It explores the inner emotional worlds of women at different stages of a life, and the passage of time. By approaching the intensity of the everyday being, in the very making of life, the novels are experiments in absolute loyalty to the lived experiences.
“Willows’ tonality is very accurate, the narrator’s voice is completely believable, and when she writes that there was never a clear transition to the adult world, that the immature just disappeared, “or not at all”, that’s exactly how it is.”
DAGENS NYHETER
New Names
(Nya Namn)
Natur & Kultur , Förlaget M / 2021 / 200 pp.
Elin Willows’ tenderly and precisely captures the intense friendships that bring us to life, but which can also end abruptly. What will be left of us, when the people we felt the closest to have become shadows?
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
Sample translation 30 pp.
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
Sample translation 30 pp.
Inlands
(Inlandet)
Natur & Kultur, Förlaget M / 2018 / 200 pp.
A young woman from Stockholm relocates to her boyfriend’s hometown, a small village in the far north of Sweden. But the relationship has ended by the time she arrives. For reasons unbeknownst to herself and others, she decides to stay.
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
English translation
© Frank A Unger
OLLI JALONEN (b. 1954) is one of Finland’s most respected literary authors. Since 1978, he has written over 15 works of fiction, some non-fiction and a children’s fantasy novel. He has received several important literary prizes, including the Finlandia Prize twice, and he has been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize three times. Jalonen has lived in Finland, Sweden and Ireland, working as a reporter, information officer and researcher.
“… a great novel about the stuffy atmosphere of Finnishness. The narration feels almost real. Jalonen is a great writer and paints the milieu and the picture of the times wonderfully.”
KULTUURITOIMITUS
EIGHT LANGUAGES SOLD
Stalker Years
(Stalker-vuodet)
First published in Swedish by Otava / 2022 / 509 pp.
In his latest novel, the great master of language and two-time Finlandia winner Olli Jalonen slips into the skin of a spy. The Life of Others meets John Le Carré and Graham Greene.
OVER 16,000 COPIES SOLD
In 1974, a student from the University of Tampere is assigned to report on the lives and political attitudes of his former schoolmates. It feels good to be part of something big. But it’s hard to approach someone and pretend you don’t know what you know. Work takes time, which real friends soon won’t have anymore. What at first seemed like an honorable mission begins to turn into a tight straitjacket.
With its strong atmosphere, Stalker Years is an autopsy of the spiritual climate of our recent history and a deep cut into the psychology of Finnishness and the so-called dark decade of the 1970’s. It’s a portrait of a whistleblower and a snitch.
Stalker Years was nominated for the Finlandia Prize in 2022.
PUBLISHERS OF RECORD
Chinese, Simplified (PLPH)
Croatian (Fraktura)
Danish (Vild Maskine)
Dutch (Mozaiek)
Estonian (Hea Lugu)
German (mare)
Latvian (Valodu maja)
Spanish (Kalandraka)
The Art of Living Under Water (Merenpeitto)
Otava / 2019 / 462 pp.
A standalone sequel to The Celestial Sphere, Angus assists Edmond Halley with his diving bell experiments in the Thames whilst he dreams of a great future and the possibility of setting foot back on St Helena one day.
The two novels was awarded the Finlandia Prize in 2018. The two novels about Angus have sold more than 75,000 copies in Finland.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Sample translation 50 pp.
Synopsis
The Celestial Sphere (Taivaanpallo)
Otava / 2018 / 461 pp.
On the mystical island of St. Helena, a young peasant boy, Angus, is appointed assistant to Edmond Halley and later follows his master to London in this glorious novel where science and religion go head-to-head in a duel at the dawn of the Enlightenment.
© Pekka Nieminen
PASI ILMARI JÄÄSKELÄINEN (b. 1966) is an author and a Finnish and literature teacher. In the early 1970’s, when he was five, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen lived in a block of flats by an old cemetery and believed in vampires. In the early 1980’s, he still had vampire dreams and fell in love with Jeanne Moreau in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Ten years later, Pasi wrote his first short stories. He won the writing competition of SciFi and fantasy stories four times and then decided to become a writer. In Pasi’s works, the world is thrown out of place and new dimensions are revealed beneath the familiar reality, somewhat in the spirit of the early works of Mihail Bulgakov, Peter Høeg and Stephen King. Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen has won numerous awards for his short stories and his works have been translated into 14 languages.
An Anatomy of Hide-and-Seek
(Kuurupiilon anatomia)
First published in Finnish by Atena / 2023 / 400 pp.
The Finlandia Prize nominated author returns with a magical novel about the search for a lost brother who disappeared during a game of hide-and-seek.
PUBLISHERS OF RECORD
Czech (Paseka)
Danish (Jensen & Dalgaard)
Dutch (Nieuw Amsterdam)
English (Pushkin Press)
Estonian (Skarabeus)
French (de l’Ogre)
Galician (Urco)
German (Aufbau)
Hungarian (Typotex)
Italian (Salani)
Korean (Bungnogeu)
Lithuanian (Versus Aureus)
Serbian (Agora)
Spanish (Duomo; Rinoceronte)
M is no ordinary child. Like a spy from another world, M meticulously studies their peers to learn about everyday things that seem to come so easy to others, and has a hard time fitting into the mould of the city of Marrasvirta in the late 1970’s. M’s older brother, the brilliant Alvar, brings some joy into the sibling’s life by inventing a peculiar game: ‘the Martian Hide-and-Seek’. The setup is simple, Alvar hides and M has to find him, but the rules are disproportionately harsh: M can’t refuse the game and Alvar can only come back home once M has found him.
Alvar makes use of his vast knowledge of illusionist tricks, and as the hide-and-seek progresses, M begins to experience it at the frontier of dream and reality. But one day, Alvar really disappears, leaving M tormented with guilt.
Years later, M heads out on a search to find out the truth about Alvar and his strange game. The journey brings M to new parts of the city of Marrasvirta, where night creatures in studded jackets and fanatical skinheads indulge in nightly dances of death.
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen’s fifth novel is an amazing journey into loyalty, betrayal and guilt.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Sample translation 35 pp. Synopsis
“Jääskeläinen is a skillful storyteller whose books always turn out to be something else than they looked like in the first place.”
KIRJAVINKIT
“Reading Jääskeläinen is like watching H. C. Andersen’s fairy tale worlds collide head-on with the Datsun of paranoia master, William S. Burroughs. In the background, the wailing waves of a broken guitar, a speeding musical instrument, and a singer’s wolf howl.”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT
© Sami
Makinen
The Red Witch
(Punainen noita)
First published in Finnish by Aula & Co / 2024 / 328 pp.
A historical novel about a strong-willed woman, a healer who was accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death.
The year is 1635. Valpuri Kinni, a woman from Courland in western Latvia, is thrown into the river in Turku. The trial by water is used to determine her guilt or innocence: if she sinks she is innocent, but if she floats she is a witch. Valpuri has traveled a long way to Finland, but there doesn’t seem to be a corner in the world where she can live in peace without accusations of witchcraft.
She is also a knitwear designer known for enchanting patterns and the author of the book Knitted Kaleval, which has been translated into several languages.
Valpuri can read spells and use herbs to cure the ailments of both people and livestock, but churchmen and townspeople only see her as a woman who has sinned and been tricked by the devil into unnatural acts. In the 17th century, maleficium is a sin, and witchcraft is a crime punishable by death.
Based on historical details found in various archival sources, The Red Witch is the story of a stubborn, outspoken and eccentric woman who does not adapt to her role in society. Her story is as timely today as it was nearly four hundred years ago.
”A consistently strong historical portrayal of a time and a person.”
TUIJATA BLOG, FINLAND
“The strong historical depiction and Kostet’s flowing and unpretentious text immerse the reader into the events of the book.”
KIRJOJEN KUISKETTA BLOG
“Beautiful...fascinating...”
AMMA’S BOOK BLOG
SHORTLISTED FOR STORYTEL AWARDS 2025
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Sample translation 15 pp.
Synopsis
RIGHTS
All rights available
”Jenna Kostet’s new novel is a fascinating depiction of how witchcraft arises in Valpuri Kinni’s life, both as an identity and as a social stigma.”
TURUN SANOMAT
“Jenna Kostet skilfully constructs historical imagery into her novel to render Valpuri’s landscape vividly to the reader’s eyes.”
KIRJAKAAPIN KUMMITUS BLOG
JENNA KOSTET is a writer from Turku who has written both novels and non-fiction books. She has studied ethnology and folkloristics and worked at Turku Castle.
© Sami
Makinen
JP KOSKINEN is a versatile author who has written historical fiction, crime, and children’s books. He has been short listed for the Finlandia Prize twice, for Firewing and for My Friend Rasputin. He holds master’s degrees in creative writing and mathematics. Koskinen won both the Savonia Prize and The Book of the Year 2019.
Thunderbird
(Ukkoslintu)
LIKE / 2024 / 300 pp.
The award-winning ‘Firewing’ trilogy comes to a conclusion in an engaging story about a young man searching for the truth.
As the great war rages in Europe, Janne Kuura, a reporter for The New York Times, realises that a tectonic shift is underway. In 1917, he crosses the Atlantic, and his work as a war correspondent takes him across a turbulent Europe, all the way to the Eastern Front, where the waves of the Russian Revolution crash fiercely. The flame of revolution begins to ignite in Janne’s heart as well. In the end, he must choose between passionate idealism and love.
The Firewing trilogy, which tells the story of the Finnish-born immigrant family in the US, has been both a commercial and critical success.
“Thunderbird flies high. It is a grand novel that completely engrosses the reader.”
“A stunning and chilling conclusion to the trilogy about Finnish immigrants. Thunderbird captivates with nearly the same force as Firewing, which can be called with such a profound term as a masterpiece.”
ETELÄ-SUOMEN SANOMAT
KANSAN UUTISET
“Thunderbird beautifully completes JP Koskinen’s trilogy. (...) The characters and settings in Thunderbird become profoundly tangible and relatable.”
SAVON SANOMAT
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
RIGHTS
Czech (Argo)
Hawkeye (Haukansilmä)
LIKE / 2021 / 467 pp.
A family leaves Finland behind in the 1860s and sails across the seas to America in search of happiness. In a country divided by the Civil War, work is hard to find, and the family sets out to inhabit the great prairies of the West. The West is even wilder than they think, and soon the family’s son George disappears into the night.
Firewing (Tulisiipi)
LIKE / 2019 / 352 pp.
An expansive, emotionally rich bildungsroman and epic tale covering large parts of the 20th century, Firewing follows a group of immigrants in search of a paradise, and one boy whose biggest dream is to fly - no matter what it takes.
The Black Tongue
(Musta kieli)
First published in Finnish by Tammi / 2023 / 316 pp.
A haunting horror novel about loneliness and its consequences.
Hautala’s story Pale Toes was nominated for the 2020 Shirley Jackson Award. In his native Finland he has received the Tiiliskivi Prize, Kalevi Jäntti Literary Prize and was nominated for the Young Aleksis Kivi Prize in 2013.
Numerous people have disappeared in the town of Vaasa over the years. In desperation, the police turn to a local medium for help. In spiritualist sessions, the police find out about things that the whole city has been silent about for a long time. Four objects tell four overlapping stories about nine victims.
With a keen eye for detail in everyday life and local history, Hautala creates interesting characters who are each broken or lonely in some way. He writes about the permanence of generational traumas and the rites of passage between childhood, youth, and adulthood in rich and imaginative language, revealing just the right amount and leaving enough in the shadows. The result is a literary horror novel that will chill you to the spine.
PUBLISHERS OF RECORD
Czech (Euromedia; Knižní Klub, Golden Dog)
German (dtv)
English (AmazonCrossing)
Italian (Newton Compton)
”An insanely good novel, Hautala’s best.”
ILKKA-POHJALAINEN
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
“ Marko Hautala’s latest novel proves that the comparisons to Stephen King are not unjust.”
HELSINGIN SANOMAT
“Hautala has once again succeeded in creating something truly eerie and dark. Such reliability is a remarkable characteristic in an author. Hautala’s latest creation can be wholeheartedly recommended to fans of horror.”
KIRJAVINKIT
MARKO HAUTALA is a writer of literary horror whose work has been translated into eight languages. Two of his stories have been optioned for film.
© Mika
Aalto
TAUNO KAUKONEN (b. 1929 d. 1983) was a Finnish writer from a working class background. He worked as a warehouse assistant, construction worker, farmer, ironworker, and painter before becoming a writer. The author of three novels and various plays, dramatisations and novellas, Kaukonen received critical acclaim for his debut, The Clan, which won the Tampere City Literature Prize in 1963.
The Clan (Klaani)
Weilin+Göös / 1963 / 397 pp.
Hailed as a timeless classic, The Clan is a Dostoyevskian novel about a working class family living on the margins of society where violence and deprivation overrule any attempts to forge a more virtuous path in life.
Following the Sammakko family, brothers Samuli, Benjamin and Leevi endure a hard-scrabble life where the Sammakkos and their loved ones balance their lives on the line between right and wrong. The counterforce is represented by the police - a clan of their own. Awakened to the intersection of society’s values and his own family’s choices, Aleksanteri Sammakko, the youngest son, realises the possibility of a better life. But the young hopeful of the family is drawn into fights and larceny.
Tauno Kaukonen received critical acclaim for a narrative power rarely seen in debuts, garnering him success and an immediate bestseller status in Finland at the time. In timelessly fresh and colourful language, coupled with its realistic narrative and expressive portrayal of humanity, The Clan remains as relevant as ever sixty years after its first publication.
“The Clan is not just any debut, but bold, cheerful and fantastic - and a surprisingly confident piece of work at that. The words flow and hurt; the subject matter and its handling is exceptional in its monstrous rogueishness.”
KAUPPALEHTI
“The Clan is a novel of skilful storytelling and expressive, vivid portrayal of humanity. It is a legend of the fringes, whose author has held an extraordinary breadth of imagination and skill in tying his rich material into a whole that is of interest and value.”
SUOMEN KUVALEHTI (1963)
“Tampere’s answer to Mark Twain.”
SOSIAALIDEMOKRAATTI (1963)
The novel was adapted into a feature film in 1984, directed by Mika Kaurismäki, with an award-winning original soundtrack composed by Anssi Tikanmäki. Most recently, it was adapted for the stage by Tampere Theatre in 2023. The novel has only ever been translated into Hungarian and Rights & Brands is pleased to be the first-ever foreign rights representation for the novel. A full English translation will be available soon.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Full English translation (tk)
Synopsis
RIGHTS
All rights available
“... a very polished text and lively sentences.”
PEKKA PIIRTO, HELSINGIN SANOMAT (1963)
“What delights in Kaukonen’s novel, alongside the tremendous epic power development, is the author’s innate and unsentimental warmth, which creates a rare beautiful and luminous portrayal of young love as a wonderful adventure in the shadow of crime and danger and the foreboding of sad disappearances. It has also enabled Kaukonen, like Dostoyevsky, to bestow on bitter misery, on deep decay, on bad people, a piece of undeniable human dignity.”
CHRISTER KIHLMAN, DAGENS NYHETER (1964)
ARTO PAASILINNA (1942-2018) worked as a lumberjack and journalist before becoming a full-time writer. He published thirty-five novels and twelve non-fiction works during his lifetime, cementing his authorship as one full of creative vision, humour, and uplifting portrayals of man’s relationship with nature. One of Finland’s most well-known writers, his works have been translated into over 40 languages and have sold over 8 million copies worldwide.
The Year of the Hare
(Jäniksen vuosi)
Weilin+Göös / 1975 / 182 pp.
The internationally bestselling comic novel about a man who realises what’s important in life after he befriends an injured hare. Celebrating 50 years since its first publication in 2025.
“A change-your-life novel.”
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
MORE
Journalist Vatanen is burned out and sick of the city. One summer evening he accidently hits a young hare on a country road. He tends to the hare’s leg, befriends the creature, and gradually sheds his former life.
The incident becomes a life-changing experience for Vatanen, who decides to quit his job, leave his wife, and sell his possessions to travel Finland with his new-found friend. Their adventures lead them to forest fires, pagan sacrifices, and killer bears before they settle down in a cosy cabin in the wilds of Lapland.
The Year of the Hare is a wildly entertaining mix of fable, farce, mid-life crisis, and travel book. It’s a tale of freedom, commitment, and survival that has been charming readers around the world for decades and is also credited with having inspired Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-YearOld Man Who Climbed Out the Window.
This award-winning book is widely considered Arto Paasilinna’s best work and a Finnish literary classic which will be reissued in a special anniversary edition by WSOY in 2025.
The Year of the Hare was adapted for film in France in 2006 (dir. Marc Rivière) and Finland in 1977 (dir. Risto Jarva). It has also been adapted for stage. The UNESCO Collection of Representative Works classified it as a masterpiece of world literature.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
French, German & Swedish PDFs Synopsis
“Sums up the Finnish culture and people.”
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
”A fable of the joys of freedom... The hare proves to be a delightful, undemanding, and loyal companion, who can laugh, listen, and feel embarrassment.”
BOSTON GLOBE
“No wonder the French have made this book into a cult. Finnish wit as sharp as the Arctic weather.”
MAIL ON SUNDAY
© Veikko Somerpuro
DISCOVER
OF ARTO PAASILINNA
A Charming Mass Suicide
(Hurmaava joukkoitsemurha)
WSOY / 1990 / 234 pp.
Two depressed men, Onni Rellonen and Colonel Hermanni Kemppainen, decide to found a ‘Let’s do it together’ suicide association to help the suicidal achieve their goal.
The two men realise they have a lot in common and decide to support each other from here on out. Together they place an advert in their local newspaper, which prompts over 600 responses from suicidal individuals. With strength in numbers, Rellonen and Kemppainen decide to form a suicide association in order to help everyone achieve their shared goal. The story reaches its climax as a busload of suicidal individuals embark on a trip across Europe in search of the best spot for a mass suicide.
A Charming Mass Suicide is one of Paasilinna’s most popular titles. It’s a joyful celebration of life that shows off his exceptional talent for dark comedy. Delving into the gloomy Finnish psyche, A Charming Mass Suicide ultimately turns the group’s misery on its head and showcases a surprising zest for life.
A Charming Mass Suicide was adapted for film in Finland in 2000 (dir. Ere Kokkonen). It was also adapted for a musical in South Korea in 2009.
The Howling Miller
(Ulvova mylläri)
WSOY / 1981 / 236 pp
The Sweet Poison Cook
(Suloinen myrkynkeittäjä)
WSOY / 1988 / 119 pp.
A dark fairytale of community, conformity and our place in the world set in backwoods Finland.
When Gunnar Huttunen turns up in a small village to restore its run-down mill, its inhabitants are wary. Gunnar is big. He’s a bit odd. And, strangest of all, he howls wildly at night.
If Gunnar is different, then he must be mad, the villagers decide. Hounded from his home, he must find a way to survive the wilds of nature and the greater savagery of civilization.
The Howling Miller is a fable of freedom and swimming against the societal current. The novel has been adapted for the stage and twice into a feature film, most recently in 2017.
“The Howling Miller has the feel of an ominous Hansel and Gretel-style bedtime story—part myth, part fable and part novel—a form that has a funny way of bypassing the head and directly affecting the animal instincts.”
LA TIMES
In the yard of a quaint red-painted house, where the midsummer rose is in bloom and a gentle breeze blows through the birch trees, Colonel’s wife Linnea Ravaska paces about anxiously. It’s pension day and, as per usual, a gang of loudmouthed louts turn up at her door demading her pension money. Led by her foster son, Kauko Nyyssönen, the rowdy gang turns up today in a stolen car. They upturn Linneas house and, after forcing Linnea to make her will to Kauko, they kill her cat.
Frightened, Linnea signs and feels she is no longer safe. She flees the farm with a dark gleam in her eye. With unexpected cunning and resolve, she begins to retaliate against her tormentors using unconventional and lethal means, blending traditional hospitality with deadly intent..
“The author concocts situational comedy highlighted by dead-pan, sometimes black humour, the kind familiar in the American Middle West.”
NEW YORK TIMES
TOVE JANSSON (1914-2001)
Finnish-Swedish writer and artist, achieved worldwide fame as the creator of the Moomins. Already admired in Nordic art circles as a painter, cartoonist and illustrator, she would go on to write a series of classic novels and short stories. She remains Scandinavia’s best-loved author.
The True Deceiver
(Den ärliga bedragaren)
First published in Swedish 1982 / 208 pp.
Everybody’s talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, ventures out from her large, empty house only in spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. Anna has something Katri wants – and by the time spring arrives, the two women are caught in a conflict that threatens the equilibrium of the whole village.
The Summer Book
(Sommarboken)
First published in Swedish 1972 / 160 pp.
An elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter Sophia spend the summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. They wander the island, having philosophical conversations of all kinds, talking about death, or how best to dive into water. They fight. They curse. They have adventures, building things and breaking into the new summer house on a neighbouring island, outraged that the businessman who built it doesn’t leave the door open. Written with clarity, brusque humour and wisdom, The Summer Book is a fresh, vivid and magical novel about seemingly endless summers of discovery.
The Summer Book feature film, starring Glenn Close in the lead, now showing in cinemas
The Listener
(Lyssnerskan)
First published in Swedish 1971 / 192 pp.
TRANSLATED INTO MORE THAN 40 LANGUAGES TO DATE!
The Listener was the first of Tove Jansson’s books to be published after the death of her mother, the point at which she declared the Moomin series over. This collection of short stories is different from Tove’s previous work; fragmentary, starting and stopping in the middle of things. Fascinatingly, the illustrator Edward Gorey appears in one of the stories saying: “It’s the unexpressed that interests me ... it’s a mistake to clarify everything.” This seems to aptly describe Tove’s writing.
The Field of Stones
(Stenåkern)
First published in Swedish 1984 / 108 pp.
A recently retired journalist leaves the city to spend the summer in the country with his two daughters. Tasked with writing the biography of the unpleasant ‘Y’, he soon finds his chronicle of this character’s life morphing into his own family’s troubled story. The darkness that surfaces is handled with Tove’s distinct humour and lightness of touch.
Fair Play
(Rent spel)
First published in Swedish 1989 / 152 pp.
Through a series of vignettes, we look in on the lives of two female artists, Mari and Jonna, who live on opposite sides of an apartment building, separated by an attic. They are each other’s closest friend, greatest critic, and lover. We encounter them lost in a fog, vacationing on a remote Finnish island, fishing, feeding the cat, or simply rearranging photos on a wall.
Tove’s whimsical yet philosophical prose about human generosity and respect perfectly echoes her signature subjects: work and love.
© Per Olov Jansson
Sun City (Solstaden)
First published in Swedish 1974 / 160 pp.
This novella, about the inhabitants of a Florida retirement home, hints at the dark reality found behind a utopian vision. Alienation, abandonment and ageing foreshadow the spectre of death – with some people simply choosing to ignore it.
Letters from Klara (Brev från Klara)
First published in Swedish 1991 / 175 pp.
In this nimble, beautifully crafted yet disquieting collection of stories, Tove Jansson explores the complicated games and relationships between people, writing from the perspective of a bewildered young artist, a resilient child or an irascible elderly correspondent. Discomfiting encounters and periods of isolation can span decades, generations even. A simple letter can reveal as much of the sender as the receiver, and how easy it can be to misunderstand one another.
The Doll’s House (Dockskåpet)
First published in Swedish 1978 / 208 pp.
A collection of twelve short stories about obsession and ambition. Witty, sharp and often disquieting, these stories explore human nature and the way in which mysteries and uncertainty — even illness and danger — can have positive and magical potential. The stories share a recurring theme: what happens when artists and eccentrics, who hide away in the back corners of middle-class society, try to change their already difficult relationship with the world?
Messages: A selection of short
stories
(Meddelande)
First published in Swedish 1998 / 303 pp.
A marvellous collection of Tove Jansson’s prose, spanning most of the twentieth century and scattered with insights into beauty found in the everyday. Messages features several stories from A Sculptor’s Daughter as well as Tove’s later story collections.
Discover the new website, Instagram, and newsletter dedicated to the life and work of Tove Jansson at tovejansson.com
A
Sculptor’s Daughter
(Bildhuggarens dotter)
First published in Swedish 1968 / 192 pp.
Tove Jansson’s first book for adults captures her childhood memories, as she grew up in an early twentiethcentury Helsinki that was getting used to independence from Russian rule. This atmospheric book is filled with sharp observations on the mysteries of winter ice, the bonhomie of balaika parties, and the limitless excitement of Christmas viewed from beneath the tree. While Tove learns a lot from her father, her identity as a writer is formed partly in opposition to him — especially when it comes to the subject of women and art.
“Tove Jansson was one of the 20th century’s most brilliant, enigmatic prose writers.”
BOSTON GLOBE
Travelling Light
(Resa med lätt bagage)
First published in Swedish 1987 / 224 pp.
A collection of twelve short stories about journeys of different kinds: some inward, some outward, all with complicated, unpredictable characters observing their surroundings as travellers, or with the unfettered gaze of a child. Tove’s signature deftness of touch and imagination gives these stories a duality between light and darkness.
LINDA LIUKAS (b. 1986) is Finland’s most renowned coding ambassador and author-illustrator of the bestselling Hello Ruby children’s books, which have been translated into 33 languages. Linda is co-founder of Rails Girls, a global initiative teaching coding to girls. In 2014 she was awarded Finland’s State Prize for her services to making digital technology education accessible for children and has been named by Forbes list as one of the most influential women in tech. Her 2015 TED talk has had over 2 million views.
To See a World in a Grain of Sand: Fifteen Ways to Look at a Computer
(Nähdä maailma hiekanjyvässä)
Published in Finnish by Otava / April 2025 / 250 pp.
Renowned Finnish author and programming instructor Linda Liukas unravels the human stories behind computers - from the first line of code to the birth of the bit - revealing how these breakthroughs shaped our world and where technology is taking us next.
What do a British society lady in 1843 and a juggling mathematician some hundred years later have in common? The former wrote the first line of code, and the latter invented the bit - both crucial components of the machine that would change the world.
Taking the reader on a journey across a fascinating map of computer science, Linda Liukas’ book takes a panoramic route to the present day, stopping at fascinating human events and revolutionary ideas. At the same time, it takes an insightful look at the impact of technology on our lives and reflects on where the computer is heading next - and us with it.
PART 1: Theoretical data processing i.e.my journey to the heart of thinking.
1. Whose child is the computer?
2. Turing’s verbs
3. Shannon’s nouns
4. Lovelace’s poetry measure
5. Von Neumann’s dictionary
PART 2: Computer systems, or diving into computer structures
6. The coding chain
7. A world in a grain of sand
8. The importance of forgetting
9. The last magician
10. Where savages lurk
11. How to keep a secret
PART 3: Power: Big arcs on a map
12. It opens up with a smile
13. How to grow a neural network
14. Unusual computers
15. An electricity that loves
© Sabrina Bqain
EMMA KLINGENBERG (b. 1982) is a Finnish-Swedish musician and actor. She has played Edith Piaf onstage at Lilla Teatern and Svenska Teatern in Helsinki. She is currently playing the lead role of Katrina at Svenska Teatern in Turku and Vasa Theatre. With a diverse career in music, film and theatre, Klingenberg debuts as a writer with this non-fiction work that assembles Tove Jansson’s own song lyrics between two covers for the first time.
Tove and Her Music
(Detta är min målarsång: Tove Jansson och musiken) First published in Swedish by Förlaget / 2025 / 197 pp.
A new, intimate glimpse into the life of Tove Jansson, uncovering the songs that inspired the artist and those which she composed herself, from Moomin melodies to hidden love song lyrics.
Music played a significant role in Tove Jansson’s life. A multi-talented artist rebel with many strings to her bow, she lived according to her own words: “paint paint paint lill girl, remember that nothing stands still, always you shall wander.” Singer and actor Emma Klingenberg, who has toured with the concert Tove Jansson - The Songwriter and researched the musical themes in Tove’s work, has now compiled her golden finds.
Klingenberg writes engagingly about the music Tove danced to in her studio and on her island of Klovharu, and delving deep into Tove’s and her partner Tuulikki Pietilä’s extensive cassette collection. Tove’s own lyrics are also collected here. Many relationships in Tove’s life influenced her songwriting, not least her stormy love affair with theatre director Vivica Bandler, which resulted in the secret collection Songs for My Woman and the bold The Big Mymble Song.
Tove and Her Music is a collection of over sixty original song lyrics and includes everything from Moomin songs to the beloved ‘Autumn Song’, illustrated throughout with unique material in the form of diary sketches, photographs and handwritten documents.
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
Sample translation 19 pp.
© Linus Lindholm
Photos © Moomin Characters™ / Linus Lindholm
© Moomin Characters™ / Saga Jansson
SAONEGIN is a Helsinki-based editor and writer with roots in the North. She has been walking on cloudberry mires since she was six.
NIINA KIVILÄ is a hiker, berry picker and a social scientist, who has often trekked the northern wilderness. She has studied creative writing at the Critical Academy in Helsinki.
Cloudberry Confessional:
Essays on Life, Land and Legends
(Hillasuolla kaikki on toisin)
First published in Finnish by Into Kustannus / 2023 / 270 pp.
Structured like a conversation with a good friend, this collection of essays transports the reader into nature, where, treacherous and sinking, the mire becomes a paradise and a home as the cloudberry becomes a muse for its pickers.
Foraging berries is a quintessentially Nordic pastime and the berry pickers gold, the mire-loving cloudberry, rubus chamaemorus, thrives on the northernmost pine mires of the Nordic countries. It is there, where writers and friends Niina Kivilä and Kati Saonegin head to in an old Saab every summer to hunt their mutual golden berry muse, equipped with rubber boots, buckets, and a dogged forager’s determination.
Like a conversation between friends, whose friendship is cemented on the boggy tussocks of the cloudberry mire amidst clouds of mosquitoes, the mire opens up as a space, a sanctuary to tackle weighty subjects such as mental health, death, and childlessness, while the friends obsessively hunt the tenacious cloudberry.
“Picking cloudberries is the best thing a person can do. A mutual love of cloudberries and mires saw two friends write a book together in which the mire is a life - in all its joys and sorrows - unto its own.”
LAPIN KANSA
A lyrical, intertextual manifesto for safeguarding our relationship to nature and the inherent value of its seemingly most inhospitable parts, Kivilä and Saonegin approach the history and ecology of the pine mires via their mutual foraging passion as well the creation myths of the Kalevala, intertextual references, and ecology. Ultimately showing us that the cloudberry plant is wiser than man, Cloudberry Confessional strikes the perfect balance between intimate yet objective, concise yet poetic, immersing readers in the Nordic relationship to nature with the life-affirming power of nature in Long Litt Woon’s The Way Through the Woods, and the essayistic style of Nina Mingya Powles’ Small Bodies of Water.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Sample translation 48 pp. Outline
Author Letter
RIGHTS
All rights available
“An evocative, conversational book that is great to immerse yourself in.”
KATI
© Jenny Rostain
ARI TURUNEN is the editor-in-chief of the Finnish edition of Le Monde Diplomatique and a non-fiction author specialising in the history of customs and culture. His works have been translated into eleven languages.
PETRI LAUKKA is the editorial writer for Kaleva newspaper.
The Atlas of Scents
(Tuoksujen atlas)
Aula & Co. / 2024 / 286 pp.
A fascinating journey through the rich world of scents.
Without scents, there would be no life: plants use scents to attract pollinators, animals use them for mating. Scent influences our consciousness, makes us more alert, evokes memories and triggers emotions. It is therefore no wonder that perfumes and spices have been among the most important trade products in the world since time immemorial.
The Atlas of Scents takes the reader on a journey across different continents and links scents to a vast collection of facts from history, mythology, literature, visual arts, etymology and chemistry. The result is a fantastically written and beautifully designed book that shows the importance of scents in our lives.
Ari Turunen has a degree in social sciences and geography. He has published 13 titles on cultural history and popular science and his works have been translated into 12 languages to date.
Good Sea, Bad Sea: The Stormy History
of the Baltic Sea
(Paha meri, hyvä meri: Itämeren myrskyisä historia)
Aula & Co. / 2024 / 300 pp.
The fascinating history of Europe’s largest inland sea.
The Baltic Sea has been an important route for both trade and the spread of new ideas for centuries—both for better and for worse. The Romans called it Mare Barbarum, or the Sea of Barbarians. The legendary Vikings and later warrior kings also sailed its waters.
Connections between the cities established along the Baltic Sea’s shores have been strong, and we can still see their influence today. Port cities were the first to adopt new products, ideas, and trends. When the gates of these ports were closed for any reason, it drove nations into intellectual and economic decline.
Unfortunately, the Baltic Sea is also one of the most polluted seas in the world, a situation with roots stretching back decades. After World War II, vast amounts of waste were dumped into the Baltic as part of the East-West struggle.
RIGHTS
Dutch (Het Spectrum)
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
Outline
RIGHTS
All rights available
ANDERS LANDÉN (b. 1982) is an author and journalist whose interest in Moomin products was awakened at a young age when he worked in a second-hand shop. Landén is a big fan of Tove Jansson and the Moomin books and has a collection of Moomin products of his own.
Treasures from Moominvalley
The Collector’s Guide to Tove Jansson’s Moomins (Skatter från Mumindalen: Samlarens guide till Tove Janssons mumintroll) First published in Swedish and English by Parlare Förlag / 2024 / 512 pp.
In Treasures from Moominvalley, Moomin lovers around the world will discover the richly-illustrated, comprehensive reference guide they deserve.
This meticulously curated volume offers an in-depth exploration of the rich legacy of Moomin culture, delving into both the beloved books and the wide array of collectibles inspired by Tove Jansson’s enchanting creations. Readers will find detailed descriptions and vibrant illustrations of a diverse range of Moomin memorabilia, from the charming handmade dolls crafted by Atelier Fauni to the delicate ceramic figurines that capture the whimsical essence of the Moomin characters. The book also features a collection of children’s bedroom paintings as well as an assortment of handkerchiefs adorned with delightful Moomin motifs.
This treasure trove of Moomin artifacts is a testament to the enduring appeal and cultural significance of the Moomin stories, offering fans an unparalleled journey through the myriad ways in which these beloved characters have touched the hearts of generations.
READING MATERIAL
Swedish edition & PDF
English edition & PDF
RIGHTS
All rights available
“This book is a treasure for anyone with a special interest in Tove Jansson’s Moomins. Overall rating: 5.”
BIBLIOTEKSTJÄNST
“Thanks to Landén’s tireless research, Treasures From Moominvalley is also fit-to-burst with whimsical facts and fascinating findings.”
VOGUE SCANDINAVIA
KAROLIINA KORHONEN says she is a female ‘Matti’ herself, and that the situations she depicts are largely from her own experiences. According to her, the Matti comics were born by accident, when she drew some sketches for her foreign friends to explain ‘Finnishness’. Korhonen is a graphic designer who lives in the city of Oulu, in central Finland.
READING MATERIAL
Finnish edition & PDF
English edition & PDF RIGHTS
Dutch (BBNC)
English (Atena)
Japanese (Hōjōsha)
Korean (Munhakdongne)
New Finnish Nightmares
Atena / 2024 / 90 pp.
A Finnish Nightmare is when you go for a walk in the forest but “everyone else” is there as well.
Suomi-Matti is here again! Matti loves silence and personal space. If you feel somewhat uncomfortable when reading this book, you just might have a tiny Matti living in you.
Finnish Nightmares
Text & Illustations by Karoliina Korhonen
First published in Finnish and English by Atena
100,000+ COPIES SOLD IN FINLAND
Meet Matti, a stereotypical Finn who appreciates peace, quiet and personal space. Among the things that make Matti anxious are receiving compliments, sitting next to a stranger on a bus, and replying to small talk with lengthy descriptions of his day. Matti tries his best to give space, be polite and not bother with unnecessary chit chat.
Finnish Nightmares have been bestsellers worldwide from Finland to Japan and from the USA to China. Matti figured in The New York Times and in The Guardian, and he even inspired a new term for social awkwardness in Mandarin: jingfen, or ”spiritually Finnish”.
Matti in the Wallet - “Matti Kukkarossa” and Other Adventures in Finnish Language Nightmares
Atena / 2019 / 100 pp.
Some say learning Finnish is like drinking tar. Nonsense!
In Matti in the Wallet, Matti clings to the Finnish language and tells how our beloved Northern people communicate.
Finnish Nightmares - A Different Kind of Social Guide to Finland
Atena / 2016 / 100 pp.
Finnish Nightmares is a book about what it is like to be a Finn in social occasions.
For a foreigner the book opens implied codes that can be difficult to understand but are shared with all Finns.
Pocket Matti - “Taskumatti” and Other New Adventures in Finnish Language Nightmares
Atena / 2022 / 96 pp.
Now you have to be as precise as a carrot! In this book, Matti bends from iron wire what the most beloved Finnish idioms mean. Literally.
Finnish Nightmares 2 - An Even More Different Kind of Social Guide to Finland
Atena / 2017 / 96 pp.
Matti does things the way a regular Finn would do: in silence and trying his best not to stand out or bother anyone.
Finnish Nightmares 2 takes Matti abroad, where he encounters even more uncomfortable social situations.
© Karoliina Korhonen
Colouring books
by Maria Trolle
Published in Sweden by Bookmark Förlag
MARIA TROLLE is an artist whose coloring books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies internationally and keep finding new fans with every new release. She’s also the illustrator of several picture books. She lives and works outside of Stockholm, Sweden.
Dive into the wonderful world of the Swedish artist Maria Trolle in this selection of adult coloring books full of natural wonders and dream-like landscapes!
Maria Trolle’s books and her unique style have gained her a wide international fan following. In her coloring books, the audience is invited on a journey through fairy-tale-like lands and deep forests. From peacock feathers and lily of the valley, to autumn leaves and lavish flowers, the books are a continuous source of wonder and beauty. With her style that draws inspiration from Scandinavian landscapes and classical children’s stories.
Sägen 2024 / 90 pp.
Luna 2021 / 88 pp.
Starfall 2023 / 91 pp.
Botanicum 2020 / 96 pp.
Universum 2022 / 91 pp.
Flora 2019 / 96 pp.
Moon Valley 2022 / 88 pp.
Nightfall 2018 / 96 pp.
Rights & Brands’ Literary Co-Agents
Poland
Macadamia Literary Agency
Magda Cabajewska magda@macadamialit.com
Spain, Portugal, Latin America (excl. Brazil)
www.rightsandbrands.com
facebook/rightsandbrands publishing@rightsandbrands.com
instagram/rightsandbrands linkedin/rights&brands
Casanovas & Lynch Literary Agency Marina Penalva marina@casanovaslynch.com
Albania, BosniaHertzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia (Children’s only)
Corto Literary Agency
Simona Kaleva simona@cortoliterary.com
Rights & Brands’ Literary Team
Eleonoora Kirk Literary Agent eleonoora.kirk@rightsandbrands.com +46 79 104 54 94
Elin Rydner (parental leave) Literary Agent
Rights & Brands Stockholm
Rosenlundsgatan 31 118 63 Stockholm Sweden
Friederike Ridegh Literary Agent friederike.ridegh@rightsandbrands.com +358 40 837 6325
Tuomas Sorjamaa Literary Agent tuomas.sorjamaa@rightsandbrands.com +358 50 351 0872
Rights & Brands Helsinki
Salmisaarenranta 7 L 00180 Helsinki Finland
