Award news for Tommi Kinnunen’s award-winning and bestselling Pine Bark!

We are thrilled to let you know that Tommi Kinnunen’s latest novel Pine Bark, which has sold more than 60,000 copies in Finland in just eight months and won the Readers’ Favorite of the Finlandia Prize of 2024, has just received the Adlibris Prize of 2024!

The Adlibris Prize is awarded by Adlibris, the biggest online bookstore in the Nordic Countries. The nominees for the prize are selected by a jury and the winner is selected based on the readers’ votes.

“Tommi Kinnunen’s Pine Bark is a densely atmospheric story about women’s war, about the difiiculty of letting go, and about how the closeness of death changes a person. It dives deep into complex interpersonal relationships, into big emotions, and is utterly convincing with its arresting storytelling.”
– Adlibris Prize jury motivation

Pine Bark is also one of the nominees for the Lapland Literature Prize! The Lapland Literature Prize, established in 2017, is awarded by the public libraries of Lapland either to an outstanding novel depicting Lapland or a Finnish novel written by an author hailing from Lapland. The award sum is 3,000 € and the Lapland Literature Prize of 2025 will be announced on March 19th, the national library day.

Download materials for PINE BARK 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 

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?