Elmer Diktonius

Elmer Rafael Diktonius (1896-1961) was a Finnish poet and prosaist who wrote in Swedish. After and along with Edith Södergran, he was the most significant Finnish-Swedish modernist and a member of the 1920's young radicals' literary group Tulenkantajat, to whose newspaper he also contributed. There were both expressionist and imagist influences seen in his works.

Probably best known for experimental 1932 novel Janne Kubik: ett träsnitt i ord (translated into Finnish as Janne Kuutio: puupiirros sanoin by the author himself – ”John Cube: a woodcut put in words”), a story of a red 1918 Civil War fighter, Diktonius was politically active leftist and closely connected to the socialist leader figure Otto Wille Kuusinen. However, he did not take p

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Aino Kallas

ENG: Aino Kallas' father was a remarkable researcher of folklore, and he died early during Aino's childhood. Aino was married to Oskar Kallas and they has three children, at the time she was still in the beginning of her career as a writer - her "best" years were in between 1920 and 1930, her style being greatly influenced by numerous people, one of which was Eino Leino. Aino spent about half a year at a hospital in 1934, healed well, yet lost her son and a daughter during Estonia's years of war. After her husband died too, Aino began writing memoirs and soon lost her other daughter too. Aino Kallas herself died in Helsinki in 1956.

FI: Aino Kallas (tyttönimeltään Aino Krohn) syntyi Viipurissa 1878. Hänen isänsä oli Julius Krohn, joka oli me
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Sophocles

Sophocles (497/496 BC-406/405 BC), (Greek: Σοφοκλής ; German: Sophokles , Russian: Софокл , French: Sophocle ) was an ancient Greek tragedian, known as one of three from whom at least one play has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus; and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia
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Raymond Carver

Carver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression. He married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit', a career that would eventually kill him. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family, Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958. He saw this opportunity as a turning point.

Rejecting the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s, he pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called 'dirty realists' or 'K-mart realists'. Set in trailer parks and shopping malls, they are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detai
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Mika Waltari

Mika Toimi Waltari was a Finnish historical novelist, best known for his magnum opus The Egyptian.
Waltari was born in Helsinki and lost his father, a Lutheran pastor, at the age of five. As a boy, he witnessed the Finnish Civil War in Helsinki. Later he enrolled in the University of Helsinki as a theology student, according to his mother's wishes, but soon abandoned theology in favour of philosophy, aesthetics and literature, graduating in 1929. While studying, he contributed to various magazines and wrote poetry and stories, getting his first book published in 1925. In 1927 he went to Paris where he wrote his first major novel Suuri illusioni ('The Grand Illusion'), a story of bohemian life. In terms of style, the novel is considered to be
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Johanna Sinisalo

ENG: Johanna Sinisalo is an award-winning Finnish author. She was born in Sodankylä in 1958. During 1984-1997, she worked as a professional designer in advertising, after which she started as a screenwriter and writer. Sinisalo's first novel, Troll, won the Finlandia prize, the most important literature award in Finland. As her hobbies, Sinisalo mentions astronomy, gastronomy, hiking, literature and comics.

The author notes that her novels always feature a bit of the small everyday reality. However, overcoming the borders of realism does not mean that the author's works were to be classified as sci-fi or fantasy – from Sinisalo's point of view, categorizing literature by genre should be left behind.

FI: Johanna Sinisalo on syntynyt Sodankylä
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Aleksis Kivi

Aleksis Kivi (born Alexis Stenvall) was a Finnish author who wrote the first significant novel in the Finnish language, Seven Brothers (orig. Seitsemän veljestä). Although Kivi was among the very earliest authors of prose and lyrics in Finnish language, he is still considered one of the greatest of them all.

Aleksis Kivi was born at Nurmijärvi, Finland, into a tailor's family. In 1846 he left for school in Helsinki, and in 1859 he was accepted into the University of Helsinki, where he studied literature and developed an interest in the theater. His first play was Kullervo, based on a tragic tale from the Kalevala.

From 1863 onwards, Kivi devoted his time to writing. He wrote 12 plays and a collection of poetry. The novel Seven Brothers took h
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Veijo Meri

Veijo Meri was a Finnish writer. Much of his work focused on war and its absurdity. The work is anti-war and has dark humor.
Born in Viipuri (today Vyborg, Russia), Meri graduated from secondary school in Hämeenlinna, then studied history and became an independent writer.
His diverse body of work included novels, short stories, poetry, and essays.
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Väinö Linna

Väinö Linna was one of the most influential Finnish authors of the 20th century. He shot to immediate literary fame with his third novel, Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier, published in 1954), and consolidated his position with the trilogy Täällä Pohjantähden alla (Under the North Star, published in 1959–1963 and translated into English by Richard Impola).

Väinö Linna was born in Urjala in the Pirkanmaa region. He was the seventh child of Viktor (Vihtori) Linna (1874–1927) and Johanna Maria (Maija) Linna (1888–1972). However, Linna's father, a butcher, died when Väinö Linna was only eight years old. Thus his mother had to support the entire family by working at a nearby manor. Despite his background, Linna's interest in literature bega
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust , published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.

George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .

With this key figure of German literature, th
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Edith Södergran

Edith Irene Södergran was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet.

Södergran was born in St Petersburg in 1892. In 1907 Edith's father died from tuberculosis, and in the following year Edith was also diagnosed with the disease. She was sent to a sanatorium, but did not feel at ease there. The feelings of captivity caused by the disease and the sanatorium are a recurring theme in her poetry.

In October 1911, Edith and her mother traveled to Arosa in Switzerland where Edith was examined by different doctors. After a few months, she was transferred to the Davos-Dorf sanatorium. In May 1912, her condition had improved enough for her to return home. Eventually, the disease returned and Edith Södergran died in 1923 in her home in Raivola. She was 31 years
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Pirkko Saisio

See also Saisio's pseudonyms: Jukka Larsson, Eva Wein

Pirkko Saisio (s. 16. huhtikuuta 1949 Helsinki) on suomalainen kirjailija, näyttelijä ja ohjaaja. Hän on kirjoittanut myös salanimillä Jukka Larsson ja Eva Wein. Saisiolla on laaja kirjallinen tuotanto, joka romaanien ja näytelmien ohella käsittää monenlaisia tekstejä elokuvakäsikirjoituksista aina balettilibretoihin asti. Saisio on kirjoittanut näytelmiä niin teatteriin kuin televisioonkin, ja lisäksi hän ohjaa ja näyttelee itsekin. Saisio suoritti Suomen Teatterikoulun näyttelijän tutkinnon 1975 ja toimi Teatterikorkeakoulun dramaturgian professorina 1997–2002.
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Pentti Saarikoski

Pentti Saarikoski was one of the most important poets in the literary scene of Finland during the 1960s and 1970s. His body of work comprises poetry, autobiographical novels and translations, among them such classics as Homer's Odyssey and James Joyce's Ulysses.
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Solvej Balle

Solvej Balle er en særegen stemme i dansk litteratur. Hun var del af en gruppe hovedsageligt kvindelige forfattere, som debuterede eller slog deres navne fast i begyndelsen af 90’erne. Siden Balle debuterede i 1986 med romanen ”Lyrefugl”, har hun udgivet ganske få værker, så det var en overraskelse, da hun i 2020 annoncerede det ambitiøse og filosofiske syvbindsværk ”Om udregning af rumfang”, som hun i 2022 modtog Nordisk Råds Litteraturpris for, for de første fire bind
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Timo K. Mukka

Timo Kustaa Mukka was a Finnish author who wrote about the lives of people in Lapland.

He was born in Bollnäs, Sweden. During his life Mukka studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and completed nine novels, written in a lyrical prose style, about the harsh conditions in Lapland, the region of his childhood and of most of his adult life. These books were published in the years between 1964 and 1970.

In the early 1960s there sprang up a movement in Finnish literature called spontaneous-confessional fiction. It was heavily influenced by the writings of Henry Miller. Its two most prominent representatives were the enfants terribles of modern Finnish literature, poet and translator Pentti Saarikoski and author Hannu Salama. Among the writ
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Minna Canth

Minna Canth, born Ulrika Wilhelmina Johnsson, 19 March 1844 – 12 May 1897) was a Finnish writer and social activist. Canth began to write while managing her family draper's shop and living as a widow raising seven children. Her work addresses issues of women's rights, particularly in the context of a prevailing culture she considered antithetical to permitting expression and realization of women's aspirations. Her play The Pastor's Family is her best known. In her time, she became a controversial figure, due to the asynchrony between her ideas and those of her time, and in part due to her strong advocacy for her point of view.

Minna Canth is the first woman to receive her own flag day in Finland, starting on 19 March 2007. It is also the day
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Eino Leino

Eino Leino was born as Armas Einar Leopold Lönnbohm in Paltamo and was the seventh and youngest son in a family of ten children.

Leino published his first poem at 12 and, by age 18, a collection of poems as well, Maaliskuun lauluja.

Writing career

Early in his career Eino Leino was much loved and praised by the critics. He joined literary and newspaper circles and became a member of the Young Finnish circle. Among Leino's friends were the artist Pekka Halonen and Otto Manninen, who gained fame as a poet and translator.[1]

After the Finnish Civil War, Leino's idealistic faith for a national unity collapsed, and his influence as a journalist and polemicist weakened. He was granted a State writer's pension in 1918 at the age of forty. Although pu
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Märta Tikkanen

Märta Tikkanen (b. April 3, 1935) is a Swedish-speaking Finnish writer. Born in Helsinki she worked as a reporter for Hufvudstadsbladet from 1956 to 1961. She graduated from the University of Helsinki, Master of Arts in 1958 and received a Master of Philosophy in 1961. Tikkanen was married to the writer Henrik Tikkanen. A film based on her book Manrape (Män kan inte våldtas, "Men Can't Be Raped"), directed by Jörn Donner, was released in 1978.
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Aino Kallas

ENG: Aino Kallas' father was a remarkable researcher of folklore, and he died early during Aino's childhood. Aino was married to Oskar Kallas and they has three children, at the time she was still in the beginning of her career as a writer - her "best" years were in between 1920 and 1930, her style being greatly influenced by numerous people, one of which was Eino Leino. Aino spent about half a year at a hospital in 1934, healed well, yet lost her son and a daughter during Estonia's years of war. After her husband died too, Aino began writing memoirs and soon lost her other daughter too. Aino Kallas herself died in Helsinki in 1956.

FI: Aino Kallas (tyttönimeltään Aino Krohn) syntyi Viipurissa 1878. Hänen isänsä oli Julius Krohn, joka oli me
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Aaro Hellaakoski

Aaro Hellaakoski oli suomalainen runoilija, maantieteilijä ja maantieteen opettaja. Hän oli kotoisin Oulusta ja vietti osan nuoruudestaan Tampereen Pispalassa. Kirjailijana hän kirjoitti runoja, mutta myös proosaa ja esseitä. Runoilijana hän oli modernismin uranuurtajia Suomessa. Maantieteilijänä hän julkaisi tieteellisiä tutkimuksia ja osallistui oppikirjojen kirjoittamiseen.
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Pentti Haanpää

Pentti Haanpää was a Finnish author.

Pentti Haanpää (1905–1955) oli kirjailijana erityisesti pohjoisen Suomen ja maaseudun yhteiskuntakriittinen ja realistinen kuvaaja. Häntä pidetään erityisesti novellitaiteen mestarina ja Haanpään tuotantoon kuuluukin kahdeksan romaanin lisäksi satoja novelleja. Hänet palkittiin Pro Finlandia -mitalilla vuonna 1948.
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Annukka Salama

www.TikTok.com/@AnnukkaSalama
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Pajtim Statovci

Pajtim Statovci is a Kosovo-born Finnish author.

FM Pajtim Statovci (s. 1990) on Suomen kansainvälisesti menestyneimpiä kirjailijoita. Kriitikoiden ja lukijoiden rakastamat romaanit, Kissani Jugoslavia ja Tiranan sydän, ovat saaneet englanninkielisessä maailmassa haltioituneen vastaanoton. Hänen teostensa käännösoikeuksia on myyty yli 15 kielialueelle. Statovci palkittiin esikoisromaanistaan Kissani Jugoslavia Helsingin Sanomien kirjallisuuspalkinnolla, ja Tiranan sydän voitti Toisinkoinen-kirjallisuuspalkinnon. Statovci asuu Helsingissä ja valmistelee Helsingin yliopistossa väitöskirjaa kirjallisuuden eläinrepresentaatioista.

Tiranan sydän (englanniksi Crossing) oli ehdolla arvostetun National Book Awards -palkinnon saajaksi. Bolla sai Finla
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Iida Turpeinen

Iida Turpeinen is a Helsinki-based literary scholar currently writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature. As an author, she is intrigued by the literary potentials of scientific research and by the offbeat anecdotes and meanderings from the history of science. Her debut novel, Beasts of the Sea (2023) was praised immediately upon its release as a world-class work, one that brings together a lost world and living literature: for it, she won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, the Thank You For the Book Prize, and was nominated for the Finlandia Prize and the Torch-bearer Prize in Finland and the Premio Strega Europeo in Italy, among others.
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Pentti Haanpää

Pentti Haanpää was a Finnish author.

Pentti Haanpää (1905–1955) oli kirjailijana erityisesti pohjoisen Suomen ja maaseudun yhteiskuntakriittinen ja realistinen kuvaaja. Häntä pidetään erityisesti novellitaiteen mestarina ja Haanpään tuotantoon kuuluukin kahdeksan romaanin lisäksi satoja novelleja. Hänet palkittiin Pro Finlandia -mitalilla vuonna 1948.
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