Where the Light Comes In

What is a person if you take away their memory? Who determines what we believe? A captivating story of rebellion, hope, and humanity..

• Finlandia Prize winner – The best Children’s & Young Adult title in Finland 2021!
• Finlandia Prize audience favorite 2021!
• Winner of the Young Aleksis Award 2022
• Rights sold to Editions Milan in France in a two-book deal!

Aleksei is a young man whose father runs a human research institute in Tokyo, which is now partly covered by the sea. New batches of test subjects regularly arrive at the facility, including one with Satomi, a young woman whose memory is set to be erased. Satomi becomes Aleksei’s trial case, since he is meant to continue his father’s work. But something is already churning beneath the surface, and the younger generation can see the horrors of the system their parents have created.

Finlandia Award winner Anne-Maija Aalto’s Where the Light Comes In is the dystopian love story of two very different characters with different values set in a water-covered former Japan. It is a stand-alone sequel to Aalto’s acclaimed novel Dragonfly and a tremendously skillful, captivating story of rebellion, hope and humanity. It was selected as the winner of the Finlandia Prize for Children’s & Young Adult Literature by futurist and non-fiction author Perttu Pölönen.