Loukko by 
We are happy to announce that the Hungarian rights to Katri Lipson’s award-winning The Ice-Cream Man (Jäätelökauppias, Tammi 2012) have been acquired by Typotex for publication in 2015 as part of their World Literature Series. Lipson’s novel has drawn enthusiastic responses from critics, and won 2013’s EU Prize for Literature, an award recognizing Europe’s best emerging authors. Lipson’s previous book, Cosmonaut (Kosmonautti, Tammi 2008), won Helsingin Sanomat newspaper’s influential Debut Book of the Year Award and was a nominee for the Finlandia Prize.
“The European Union Prize for Literature draws international attention to fantastic new or emerging authors who might otherwise not gain the recognition they deserve outside of their home country. As well as helping these writers to reach new audiences, our aim is to introduce readers to great new European literature and offer them more choice,” said Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, upon the announcement of the award. Read more about the EU Prize for Literature and Katri Lipson here.
“Lipson’s technique boldly breaks with the supremacy of narrative and calls into question the construction of historical truth,” wrote literary journal Books from Finland.
“The novel is a reader’s paradise, full of thematic expansions, the most fully developed ones relating to national tensions. Lipson tackles the topic in a similar vein as Sofi Oksanen; in her hands nationalism and sexual desire became a lethal combination in Purge,” wrote Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest newspaper.
Upon The Ice-Cream Man’s publication in 2012, Finland’s National Broadcasting Company YLE called Lipson’s novel “one of this year’s literary gems.”
Rights sold:
Bulgaria, Perseus
Czech, Argo
Hungary, Typotex
Turkey, Nemesis
Original publisher: Tammi 2012, 300 pp.
Reading material: Full English draft translation, German sample, Finnish edition
Contact: info@ahlbackagency.com