Leena Krohn’s Tainaron, one of the most fascinating modern classics in Finnish literature, has appeared for the first time in Dutch translation.

It’s an intriguing novel-as-collection-of-letters, reminiscent of Calvino’s Invisible Cities (and of Auster’s In the Country of Last Things). Rooted in utopian literature, the epistolary novel, and classics from entomology / insect studies, this book is an intriguing reflection on questions of humanity itself, and an excellent introduction into the work of Leena Krohn.

I wrote the epilogue (in Dutch), which can be found here.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is the way in which it envisions an urban environment that is (at times) recognizably Helsinki, but that simultaneously blurs into a variety of overlaying, palimpsestic layers of meaning in which past and future, the realm of death and the realm of dreams, intersect.

The translation of Tainaron in English can be found at Krohn’s website, here.