Loukko by 
Original title: 36 uurnaa. Väärässä olemisen historia
Author: Sirpa Kähkönen
Published: 2023
Publisher: Siltala
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 267
Reading material:
English sample & synopsis, Swedish edition, Finnish edition
Winner of the Finlandia Prize of 2023! Nominated for the Runeberg Prize of 2024 and Savonia Prize 2023! 90,000 copies sold in Finland! Rights sold to 6 territories and counting!
A beautiful, enchanting family saga: "It is a book for the head and the heart, with universal themes and a lot of light.” "A masterpiece"
For readers of Elizabeth Strout, Tove Ditlevsen, Moa Martinson, and Natalia Ginzburg
Author Sirpa Kähkönen’s mother Riitta (b. 1941) died in March 2022 after a long illness. In life, she struggled to accept love. “I do not grieve your death, I grieve your life,” Sirpa Kähkönen writes, knowing fully well that her mother wouldn’t like the phrase. Her mother rejected love, despite longing for it the most. Riitta was athletic, beautiful, and gifted. A traffic accident at the age of 16 changed the course of her life for ever.
Drawing on her mother’s diaries, Kähkönen depicts the life of a 1950s girl and the dramatic change that followed the accident. The novel talks about community dance halls, a broken mind, flowing hems, a 1960s mother, anxiety, anger and hate, addiction, and moments of psychosis. It talks about how wars and other crises become corporeal, how violence is inherited, and how the culture of discouragement and submission is passed down through the generations in sayings and attitudes, with the author clearly seeing herself as part of the tradition of anger and violence.
The novel is permeated by a fiery love, as if an ancient Finnish spell that, with the power of words, is capable of bringing loved ones back from the dead.
“The book is a skillful literature work, perceptive and insightful. Confession-like. The prose is clear and precise. [—] The personal experience of the author grows into a universal reach, and she finds something globally applicable about humans, hate, anger, lies, hope, dreams and their crumbling, death. This brings forth a masterpiece, which is worth living for. ” - Jorma Uotinen, Finlandia Literature Prize Grand Juror
In her very intimate and poetically told autofictional work “36 Urns”, Sirpa Kähkönen deals with her mother's death by trying to understand her mother’s life. During a single sleepless night, the daughter examines their complicated relationship through 36 objects and memories left behind by her mother. The understanding she gains this way is comforting, forgiving and helps her to gain new insights about herself. Kähkönen takes us from Helsinki in the year 2023 to the eastern Finnish province of the 1920s, to the age of wooden houses and steam locomotives, enlighten us on Finland's conflict-ridden relationship with Russia, sheds light on the development years of the 1970s and finally returns to the present. It is a book for the head and the heart, with universal themes and a lot of light.
– Dr. Silja Maehl, Fiction Editor at Wilhelm Heyne & Blessing Verlag , Penguin Random House Germany
Download reading materials Rights sold:
FINLAND: Siltala (orig.)
AZERBAIJAN: Qanun
ESTONIA: Koolibri
GERMANY: Blessing Verlag
HUNGARY: Polar Könyvek
SWEDEN: Lind & Co
