The Ahlback Agency FICTION Spring 2024 Rights Guide!

We are thrilled to present our Fiction Catalogue for Spring 2024!

This is the season of literary fiction. Tommi Kinnunen, one of Finland’s most award-winning, bestselling and internationally acclaimed authors, joins our Agency with his sixth novel Pine Bark about women’s fates in times of war. In their new novels, award-winning and bestselling authors Saara Turunen and Kaj Korkea-aho explore the different challenges and aspects of hoping for and having a child, and Sara Al Husaini makes her debut with an eye-opening and honest novel about the oppression of women.

We also welcome two wonderful and bestselling crime and thriller authors to our Agency: Arttu Tuominen is a Spiegel Bestselling and a Palle Rosenkrantz Prize-winning author, with his River Delta series sold to 7 territories and counting! Award-winning author and former US correspondent, journalist Tuomas Oskari (aka Tuomas Niskakangas) offers the readers a fast-paced international thriller The Eagle that features a murder mystery in the White House!

From our new catalogue, we’ve picked some of the hottest titles for you – take a look at them below!

View the Spring 2024 Fiction Catalogue here!

Pine Bark

Tommi Kinnunen

A densely atmospheric and arrestingly written novel about women’s fates in times of war, the difficulty of giving up, and how the proximity of death can change a person

• Novels by award-winning author Tommi Kinnunen have been sold to 22 territories
• The sixth novel by one of Finland’s most award-winning, bestselling and internationally acclaimed authors!

A person cannot return to being who they once were without knowing who they have been.

In 2001, three siblings – Martti and twin sisters Eeva and Marja – meet in a small village in Northern Finland. Their mother Laina, an old woman who has been through the Second World War, is dying and the children have gathered to arrange the funeral. Even though the siblings have always been on good terms, Martti has always felt aloof, the odd man out. All of them reminisce about their childhood, but Martti remembers things slightly differently than the sisters.

As the novel progresses, the readers are transported through the decades and through Laina’s story, culminating in the Soviet partisan attack during the summer of 1944 that irrevocably changed Laina’s life. She has refused to recall the events and, at the same time, has denied her children the opportunity of remembering and recovering. “One can only talk about men’s war, as the women’s war is soundless and forbidden.”

As his mother’s death grows nearer, Martti reaches out to connect with his siblings and attempts to fill in the gaps in the story, but is it already too late?

Hyena Days

Saara Turunen

Is it possible to have a child and retain one’s own identity?

• The fourth novel by award-winning and bestselling author, playwright and director
• For readers of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti

The protagonist, an artist, has dreamed about having a child for years. She and her husband try to get pregnant, but they face obstacles such as COVID-19 pandemic and the related lockdown, living in different countries, and unsuccessful IVF treatments. When their last effort bears fruit and the protagonist becomes pregnant, different contradictory thoughts and emotions such as fear, shame and horror come to her mind. Eventually, the child is born, and the protagonist finds herself in a new reality. Everything that had been important before now seems the opposite. Also, taking care of a child is not without its problems, leading the protagonist to feel inferior. Reason on one hand and animality on the other cause conflict in her life.

Hyena Days is a precise and straightforward story about childlessness and the contradictory nature of having a child. It depicts the hopes for a child and the unpredictability of procreation, the shame related to one’s body, and the demands placed on the female body. The novel delves into the incompatible ideas between artistry and motherhood but, above all, it depicts the physical dimension of human life.

A Disobedient Girl

Sara Al Husaini

An honest and authentic debut novel by the winner of the Refugee Woman of the Year Award, a novel that shakes the reader to their core

• Winner of the BookBeat Newcomer of the Year Award!
• More than 26,000 copies sold in Finland!

A mother is escorting her daughter, trembling with fear, to the wedding suite door. This is what she’s been raised for ever since she was little, kept in wrapping paper like a precious sweet. This is the reason why she was brought back from Finland to Iraq.

“You shouldn’t have abandoned the headscarf”, her siblings say. “He is your husband now”, her mother says.

A Disobedient Girl is an astonishingly honest and authentic story about the history of subjugating and silencing women, about abandoning one’s faith, honor violence, forced marriage, Islamic morality, the price of freedom, and the desperate desire for the right to self-determination. Above all, it is about a fearless woman who wants to survive and change the world.

How We Met Your Mother

Kaj Korkea-aho

An autobiographical story about a gay couple’s journey to co-parenting

• The fifth novel from award-winning author, playwright and columnist
• Kaj Korkea-aho’s works translated into 7 languages and nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize

After eight years together, Kaj and Niko, living in Helsinki, decide to try to become parents. They start dating women, but the search for a co-parent seems impossible at first. What has to be right so that one could dare trust a complete stranger? Whose sperm cells should be used? How do you plan the future of a family that is outside the norms, in a society that is still coded heterosexually?

Kaj Korkea-aho’s autobiographical text about how three parents had a child is irresistibly touching, painful, and humorous. It bears traces of all forms of expression mastered by Korkea-aho – novel, podcast, blog, and drama – and can also be used as a kind of handbook for others in the same life situation. The book grabs the reader like a baby with its little hand and doesn’t let go until the book has been finished and the wonder of life has become a fact.

River Delta #5: The Liberator

Arttu Tuominen

Henning Mankell meets Stephen King! Arttu Tuominen’s unique human touch and excellence in depicting characters combined with shocking horror elements brings originality to Nordic Noir.

• International success – River Delta series has sold to 7 territories! Each novel can be read as a standalone.
• Arttu Tuominen is a Palle Rosenkrantz Prize-winning and a Spiegel Bestselling author! 

The charred body of a man is discovered on a sports field in Pori. The victim had been doused with petrol and set on fire. Suspicions are directed at a group of young adults known to have harassed rough sleepers in the past. When a second arson attack is caught on CCTV, the Pori police are forced to take the attacks seriously as rumours on the street talk of a ‘liberator’ offering the wretched eternal life and freedom from pain.

The investigation takes the police deep into the world of the marginalised: nocturnal streets, drug dens, forest camps, bridge underpasses, and night shelters. Detective Susanna Manner, who leads the investigation, has a secret: her son is a rough sleeper involved in a serious crime. Manner is faced with the impossible dilemma: to put her child or her job first?

Internationally bestselling author Arttu Tuominen delivers a new crime novel with a strong social conscience, taking readers into the Pori night in all its colourful lights and inhabitants, tattooing it on to the reader’s skin.

The Liberator is the fifth book in the acclaimed River Delta series, which has seen commercial success and garnered praise from readers and critics alike, both at home and abroad. Set in the city of Pori by the Gulf of Bothnia, a Finnish police unit has to solve crimes that force them to consider their own acts and values. In turn, each of the officers of the unit is centered in the narration, having to face their own ghosts from the past. Each novel can be read as a standalone.

Leo Koski #3: The Eagle

Tuomas Oskari

A desperate father, an unhinged president, and a conspiracy to change the world.

• For fans of Dan Brown and David Baldacci! The Eagle is the third, fully independent book!
• A fast-paced international thriller with a murder mystery in the White House.

Former prime minister of Finland Leo Koski is a 39-year-old single dad, done with politics and traumatized by the murder of his true love. As the populist US president Chester Tyler is withdrawing the United States from NATO, Koski is forced to return to the White House for one more meeting.

Things unravel when the president is poisoned. Koski is faced with a horrible choice between his daughter’s life and the security of Europe. With the New York Times reporter Ashley Pegula by his side, Koski has only a few hours to find out who poisoned the president. And why?

Perfect for anyone looking for a smart and fast-paced thriller, The Eagle is the third, fully independent book in the Leo Koski series. The previous titles Their Turn to Burn and The Act of Gladius have been acquired by Bastei Lübbe in Germany and Their Turn to Burn was chosen as the BookBeat Newcomer of the Year for 2021!