Savonia Prizewinner

“Readers will turn the pages at a record pace… The novel is so addictive, it challenges its worst competitors - the Internet streaming services.”

A powerful debut novel where the beauty of the Arctic nature in Lapland contrasts with the brutal actions conducted both at a secret Nazi prison camp during the Second World War and against the indigenous Sámi people after the war.

The dual storyline takes place in Northern Finland, in Lapland, altering between two points in time:

In 1944, a young Finnish soldier is sent to work as an interpreter at a secret prison camp run by the Nazis. His diary entries lead to one of the darkest periods in human history.

In the late 1940's, Inkeri, reporter and photographer from the south, arrives to write about the reconstruction of the Enontekiö town in Lapland after the war. She befriends a young Sámi girl and learns about the ongoing racial profiling of the indigenous Sámi people. She also has a personal agenda: to find out what happened to her husband who never returned from the war.

Underneath the skies of polar night and midnight sun, dark secrets begin to unfold.

“As a Finn, Rautiainen succeeds in describing the history of Finland’s colonialisation and also gives a voice to the Sámi instead of depicting them as silent or passive victims. However, the novel does not blame, but gives something to reflect on.”

Vi l äser

“A perfectly robust, intense thriller plot.” n ini wähä, a uthor of Tes Tamen T

"A thrilling novel but deeply horrific."

I, Catherine (Minä, Katariina)

607 pages | First published in Finnish by Otava 2011

Russian empress Elizabeth commands fourteen-year-old princess Sofia to Moscow to betroth her to her nephew and the heir to the throne, Great Duke Peter. In company of her cold, intrigant mother and her closest servants, the future Catherine is thrown in the Russian court, full of intrigues. Her sixteen-year-old fiancé Peter is an ongoing deception. The young woman’s most important task is to give an heir to the throne, but it takes far too long. Empress Elizabeth arranges affairs for Catherine and treats her in the most tyrannic ways.

Helped by her closest friends and ladies-in-waiting, Catherine must fight to impose herself and get the respect of the court, and to get along with her childish husband Peter, while fearing for her life if she becomes useless for the Empress.

Hirvisaari takes the reader to the court intrigues and luxurious feasts of Russia in the 1700‘s, but also depicts in a very moving way the feelings and emotions of a woman, a mother and a grandmother.