A Thrilling Adventure for Children! JOHANNA The Land of ......JOHANNA SINISALO A Thrilling Adventure for Children! Rights enquiries: Elina Ahlbäck, Literary Agent, CEO Telephone:

JOHANNASINISALO

A Thrilling Adventure for Children!

Rights enquiries:Elina Ahlbäck, Literary Agent, CEO

Telephone: +358 400 548 402 • E-mail: [email protected]: Korkeavuorenkatu 37 • FI-00130 Helsinki, Finland

Website: ahlbackagency.com

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Winner of the James Tiptree Jr Award

Rights sold to 14 countries:UK, USA, GERMANY, SPAIN, FRANCE, SWEDEN, POLAND, RUSSIA, JAPAN...

The Land of MobiusPi is eight years old, and she’s had a rotten sum-mer vacation so far. Her best friend Sanna is mov-ing away, and her special hideout in the woods has been smashed. Even her big sisters, who are verging on adolescence, have changed so much she hardly recognizes them anymore. But then Pi finds a strange object that looks like a brace-let among the trash cans, and an even stranger creature: Schrödinger’s Cat, who according to its own words both exists and does not exist at the same time...

Schrödinger’s Cat leads Pi into a thrilling par-allel world, the existence of which is threatened by a mystical danger. As it turns out, Pi is the one who can save this world! But how can Pi, a little girl, meet such a challenge? Especially as it be-comes evident that she might be just a figment of someone else’s imagination too? For a guide, Pi has Topo, a creature that was born wise and is getting dumber by the moment as it grows older. Pi encounters Hills That Walk and the noinutes, greedy little creatures that hold the will of the pack above all else.

The Land of Mobius is a wild, exciting, com-plex tale that will whisk children away on an ad-venture that will test their intelligence and imagi-nation – and at the same time explore concepts like friendship, aging, tolerance, and how in all worlds everything affects everything else. Greed, laziness, and selfishness may not triumph after all, when confronted by Pi, a clever child who strug-gles to overcome her own limitations and has read her best loved books closely.

Johanna Sinisalo has done it again: surprised everyone. Who knew a trip to another reality could be quite this charming or fun?

An Interview with Johanna Sinisalo

Q: And who do you think you are? A: I’m a Finnish writer.

Q: Oh, another hack from an obscure country with a tongue-twisting lan-guage that about a dozen people speak. Ever been translated into any civilized languages?

A: Actually, yes. There are even some titles available in English – my first novel, Not Before Sundown, which in the USA was published as Troll – A Love Story, and my latest novel, Birdbrain. There are some translat-ed short stories published here and there in English, too, mostly in an-thologies. So far, Not Before Sun-down has been translated into 12 languages and at least two more translations are under way. And a novelette of mine, Baby Doll, attract-ed some nice attention in France and the USA.

Q: Hey, I happen to know that the liter-ary language barrier is almost impos-sible to cross when you come from some small, exotic country like Fin-land. In the Anglo book market, fic-tion and non-fiction translations rep-resent only about 3 % of all titles published. And that 3 % includes ALL other languages but English, – biggies like French, Spanish, Chi-nese, you name it. A Finnish writer shouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.

A: I agree. I was just lucky enough to win the Finlandia Prize, our nation-al award for novels that is some-thing like the Finnish Booker, and so some foreign publishing houses got interested in my work. And the language barrier seems to be a bit less sturdy nowadays – some Finn-ish writers, like Elina Hirvonen and Sofi Oksanen, have been introduced to the English language market with a very good reception.

Q: Why should I read anything written by you?

A: Because I’m so darn good. The Bos-ton Globe called my novel “brilliant”. Who am I to question their taste?

Q: Future plans? A: Yes, I'm currently writing a new nov-

el. Its working title could be translat-ed roughly as Of Blood of Angels, coming out in Autumn 2011. Read more about Johanna Sinisalo at:

www.teos.fiwww.peterowen.com

A Unique Perspectiveto Contemporary Fiction

“I wanted to turn a new page on Finnish crime fiction by creating the first professional female protagonist, and it’s work out marvelously.”

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Johanna Sinisalo is without doubt one of Finland’s most internationally successful authors. Her first novel, Ennen päivän-laskua ei voi (Not Before Sundown, Tammi 2000), was awarded the Finlandia Prize for literature and the James Tiptree Jr Award in 2004. The rights have been sold to 14 countries thus far.

Sinisalo’s novel Lasisilmä (The Glass Eye, Teos 2006) has been published in German by Tropen. Her latest novel, Linnun aivot (Birdbrain, Teos 2008), was a great success. It has been published in French by Actes Sud and in English by Peter Owen Pub-lishers to brilliant reviews. The Guardi-an newspaper and Publisher’s Weekly both lifted it to their recommendations lists.

In 2005 Sinisalo edited an anthology,

The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy, for the English publisher Dedalus. In addition to numerous other awards, her short sto-ry Baby Doll was shortlisted for the pres-tigious Nebula Award in 2009.

Translation rights to Sinisalo’s books have been sold to the following languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Swed-ish, Japanese, Russian, Latvian, Lithua-nian, Slovenian, Albanian, Czech, Polish and Bulgarian.

(Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi, Tammi 2000)

The international fantasy best-seller (published in America as Troll) and winner of the Finlandia Prize. Mikael, a young gay photographer, finds in the courtyard of his apartment block a small, man-like creature. It is a young troll, familiar from Scan-dinavian mythology: a demonic, wild beast, a hybrid like the werewolf. Supposedly extinct, today it is regarded as a hairy, cuddly toy by Nordic children. Mikael gives the troll a name, Pessi, and takes him home and hides him. The first thing Mikael does is research everything he can about trolls on the internet and from folklore, na-ture journals and newspaper cuttings. What Mikael does not discover is that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a pro-found aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for an ul-tra-hip brand of jeans, Mikael finds himself fast-tracked into a dangerous liaison with Martes, the sexually ambivalent art director of the advertising agency concerned, while a cou-ple of his friends in turn fall in love with him because he carries the troll’s scent. What Mi-kael fails above all to learn, with tragic conse-quences, is that Pessi the troll is the interpret-er of man’s darkest, most forbidden impulses.

(Kädettömät kuninkaat ja muita häirit seviä tarinoita, Teos 2005)

Johanna Sinisalo’s retrospective collection of short stories, The Handless Kings and Other Disturbing Tales, consists of both sto-ries published earlier and completely new ones. The prize stories have been extolled by Finnish science fiction fans: three of the stories published in the collection have been awarded the Atorox prize. The nov-elette Baby Doll was shortlisted for the Nebula Award in 2009. The stories in the collection are set in places familiar to us and yet somehow amazingly different.

(Lasisilmä, Teos 2006)

The Glass Eye is a ruthless psychologi-cal thriller which de-scribes the dynamics of a close, creative work team. Taru finds herself in a world where the boundaries between fiction and facts blur and prophecies be-

gin to come true. In the world of The Glass Eye Taru learns that all relationships have hidden meanings and that nothing is nec-essarily what it seems. When Taru’s little sister Aija appears on the scene, events take another turn and there is no turning back.

Johanna Sinisalo’s works hook the read-er straight away. Her stories open doors to new worlds: they look at life from strange angles, they create suspense and some-times even make the reader laugh. Sinis-alo’s books always offer sharp, open-mind-ed analysis and criticism of contemporary society. The Glass Eye is no exception. Is the television screen a window into anoth-er world or it is a mirror? Does the glass-eye observe us from the corner of our liv-ing room instead of us observing it, just as George Orwell predicted?

PRAISE FOR THE GLASS EYE:

“How can a book be so complex and multi- levelled? Johanna Sinisalo’s The Glass Eye changes its structure and colours like a chameleon.”

– Kati Hyttinen, MTV3/Helmi

Birdbrain

Not Before Sundown

“A sense of lurking horror that will leave you troubled for weeks.”

– Sam Jordison, A Guardian Book of the Year, 2010

“A punk version of ‘The Hobbit’. ”– USA Today

The Glass Eye

The Handless Kings and Other Disturbing Tales

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“The queen is dead. The bees are gone. Thus, the world is about to end.

But if you follow the bees, there are doors in the air. And a desperate man is ready to go through one.”from Johanna Sinisalo’s new novel,

‘Of Blood of Angels’, coming out in Autumn 2011

“A sharp, resonant, prickly book that exists on the slipstream of SF, fantasy, horror and gay fiction.”– Neil Gaiman

(Linnunaivot, Teos 2008)Sinisalo’s latest novel, Birdbrain, is a skilful portrait of the unquenchable desire of Westerners for the pure and the primitive. A young Finnish couple, Jyrki and Heidi, go on the hiking trip of a lifetime in Australasia with Heart of Darkness as reading material. To Jyrki’s great surprise, his girlfriend Heidi demands to come with him, frightened by the idea of several months of solitude. The trip gradually turns into a tortuous thriller with belongings disappearing and, even more mys-teriously, reappearing. The travellers come to be at the mercy of untamed nature. Birdbrain describes the desperate Western longing for somewhere unspoilt and primitive with biting irony. At the same time, it reveals the dark side of this longing, showing it to be an insatiable desire to control, invade and leave one’s mark on the landscape. But what happens when na-ture starts to fight back?

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RIGHTS SOLD: UK, USA, FRANCE, SpAIN, GERmANy, SwEDEN, JApAN, RUSSIA, LATvIA, LITHUANIA, SLOvENIA, ALbANIA, CzECH REpUbLIC, pOLAND AND bULGARIA