INHERITED LAND by Maria Turtschaninoff honoured with the “Thank You for the Book” Award!

We are happy to announce that Maria Turtschaninoff was given the “Thank You for the Book” Award for her internationally best-selling book INHERITED LAND (Finnish title: Suomaa, orig. Arvejord) on 23st April 2023 at the Helsinki Central Library Oodi celebrating the World Book Day!

The award, which is handed out yearly by booksellers and librarians in Finland, is a recognition given to an especially stimulating book. The jury said:

“Turtschaninoff has a wonderful skill of building unique characters, even if they appear for only one chapter in the book. The ancient but already crumbling forest relationship of Finns is a timely and rousing theme. Inherited Land is a beautiful and thought-provoking title, which is especially impressive as Turtschaninoff’s first adult novel.”

Previously, INHERITED LAND has been awarded the Swedish Yle Literature Prize! The international success story of INHERITED LAND continues, as the rights for the title have now been sold to 20 territories! 

Rights are still available in Greece, Spain, Japan, China, Portugal, Latvia, Iceland, Slovakia, Lithuania, Turkey…

Download the materials for INHERITED LAND here!

Inherited Land

Maria Turtschaninoff

Inherited Land is an episodic work of literary fiction depicting human relationships with nature across generations, following in the tradition of family sagas like One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

The roots of man and forest are intertwined in the depths of the earth.

• Winner of the Svenska YLE Literature Prize!

Inherited Land tells multiple enchanting stories about short human lives on a small farmstead in the north of Finland with its golden cloudberries and the mythical woodland animals. The hub of the narrative is a marsh close to the farmstead, and nature is the constant while humans are like dragonflies: here one day, gone the next. Across four centuries, the people face wars, epidemics, and heartbreaks, but from the woods they find shelter and a place to be themselves

Inherited Land is a novel about the climate crisis without ever mentioning it by name. Instead, the novel explores what people have thought about their environment, how they have used it and why. The novel is a reminder of where we have come from, and what a relationship between humans and nature could look like in the future.

The book is beautiful like a piece of jewelry and rich like a forest.
– Freja Rudels, Åbo Underrättelser newspaper