Description
Editions Esprit Ouvert, Published 1993. Paperback, 117 pp.; 21 cm; text in French; first French edition (depot legal 1re edition mars 1993), printed January 1993 by Grafiche AZ, Italy, on acid-free paper; translated from the Finnish (Muuan rakkaustarina, WSOY, 1980) by Pierre-Alain Gendre, published with the support of the Finnish Literature Society; cover reproduces Pekka Halonen's painting Avannolla (Washing on the Ice). Inscribed and signed by the translator on the title page (recipient's first name, "Pierre-Alain," dated May '97); not signed by the author.
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Cream illustrated covers with French flaps, light toning to covers, a faint scuff near lower front corner and a tiny spot at head of rear cover, mild shelf wear. Binding tight, spine uncreased. Pages clean and unmarked. Novel of North Karelia, the province on the Russian border, by a farmer's son (b. 1936) who turned to journalism and fiction and published some fifteen books before this one made his reputation in Finland; it took the North Karelia provincial arts prize in 1978. Sauli comes home after years in the city to raise pheasants on his parents' farm and takes up again with Anneli, a woman he knew when young; the quiet life they build is shadowed by Hiltunen, the neighbor with the big black gun who shoots their birds and treats the woods as a hunting ground rather than land to be worked. Published by Esprit Ouvert, the Lausanne house whose list ran to Danish and Faroese authors such as Peter Seeberg and William Heinesen. Rear flap carries a photograph and biography of the author.
