1985 Antti Tuuri, Finland: Pohjanmaa

Antti Tuuri, BSc in engineering and writer, was born in Kauhava in Etelä-Pohjanmaa. He has written film manuscripts, opera librettos and theatre plays, but is primarily known as a novelist of wide, epic narrative. Many of his novels have been turned into films, for example The Winter War, which deals with the Finnish Winter War and became one of the greatest Finnish film successes ever. He has also worked as a translator, translating, for instance, Icelandic sagas into Finnish.

A day in Ostrobothnia actually only deals with one single day, but even so the novel succeeds in depicting longer drawn-out social changes and how humans endeavour to adapt to new conditions. With wide strokes, the author paints a historic-social perspective, but is no stranger to the more individually amusing aspects of life. Later, Antti Tuuri expanded the novel to become a large suite of novels depicting a Kauhava family through several generations. The reader also comes to know Finnish emigrant environments in Canada.

Pohjanmaa (A day in Ostrobothnia)

Published by: Otava Publishing Company 

Publication year: 1982

In his novel "A day in Ostrobothnia" Antti Tuuri describes in a scanty, humorous style and with a background in a conflict-ridden epoch in Finland’s history, the contrasts between an old order of society and a new, as well as the contrasts between generations and between man and woman.