Arto Paasilinna

From The D Archives

Arto Tapio Paasilinna (born 20 April 1942) is a Finnish writer, being a former journalist turned comic novelist. One of the most successful novelists of Finland, he has won a broad readership outside of Finland in a way few other Finnish authors have before. Translated into 27 languages, he has sold tens of millions of books worldwide and been claimed as "instrumental in generating the current level of interest in books from Finland".

Paasilinna is best known for his 1975 novel The Year of the Hare (Jäniksen vuosi), a best-seller in France and Finland, translated into 18 languages, awarded three international prizes, and adapted twice into feature films.

My personal opinion

Mr. Paasilinna did his best works earlier on. I'd say that Paasilinna was at his best during the early 1980's and late 1970's. After these golden years, he managed to write a couple of fairly interesting and witty novels, but in the late 90's and almost all the way through 2000 to 2008 the books he wrote just started to lose original plots, the author started to cut alot of corners in order to just finish his books and the guy just seemed to more out for money than anything else. Naturally Paasilinna had some good exceptions made during his 1990's publications too, but generally there's just not very many publications from him at that time worth mentioning. Also, Paasilinna is famous for fucking up the endings on his books - one notable example is Jäniksen Vuosi, which was very original, full of humour and even some irony - all up until the end! Many good enough Paasilinna-books all end up messing the conclusion of the story, or then they just turn very bland very quickly. So, my advice is stick to his earlier works, and maybe read only a couple of publications from him that were made in the 1990's.