
Original title: Arvejord
Author: Maria Turtschaninoff
Published: 2022
Publisher: FINLAND: Förlaget (orig.)
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 371
Reading material:
Swedish manuscript
Finnish translation
English edition
Tangled Roots (aka 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 people and forest are intertwined in the depths of the earth.
An old soldier carves a croft out of the Finnish forest and calls it home, but try as he might to tame the land, its wild magic endures. For centuries his descendants will work the farm, through days of plenty and famine, love and war, their fates entangled with the rhythms of the ancient wilderness, where mysterious shapes flit between the trees and danger lurks in the treacherous fen…
Like dragonflies darting over the marsh, their lives glimmer briefly and then are gone: a young girl entranced by the forest folk, a faithless fiancé who meets his match beneath the age-old branches, a farmhand with a strange obsession…
What endures is the wild, and the certainty that wherever we put down roots, the land will grow roots in us too.
I couldn’t be more firmly convinced that TANGLED ROOTS and Atlas Contact would form a match made in heaven. It is also the rare kind of book that prompts utter love at first sight for me personally: formally and stylistically inventive without making any concessions to storytelling; a compelling, episodically structured book that challenges the reader to connect some of the dots herself; a book that addresses an urgent subject for our times – how we humans treat the natural world that has been entrusted to us – without being heavy-handed about it; and most importantly: a book that zooms in on real characters of flesh and blood and gets the reader invested in their fates in just a few strokes of the pen. It is an amazing achievement from a writer with a brilliant future ahead of her.
– Jessica Nash, Publisher, Atlas Contact, Netherlands
Rights sold:
FINLAND: Förlaget (orig. Finland-Swedish), Tammi (Finnish), SWEDEN: Förlaget
AZERBAIJAN: Alatoran
BULGARIA: Izida
CHINA: Rentian Ulus
CROATIA: HENA COM
CZECHIA: ARGO
DENMARK: Alpha Forlag
ESTONIA: Rahvat Raamat
FRANCE: Éditions Paulsen
GERMANY: Rowohlt
HUNGARY: L’Harmattan
ISRAEL: Hakibbutz Hameuchad – Sifriat Poalim Publishing House
ITALY: Bompiani
NETHERLANDS: Uitgeverij Atlas Contact
NORWAY: Bonnier Norsk Forlag
POLAND: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie
ROMANIA: Editura Univers
TURKEY: Timas
UKRAINE: Old Lion Publishing House
WORLD ENGLISH: Pushkin Press