Datura
The original novel was published in 2001. Translated by Anna Volmari and Juha Tupasela.
"Datura is luminous - at once a secret history of losers, dreamers, and quacks, and a lyrical argument on the nature of reality. I thoroughly enjoyed it." – Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria
Our narrator works as an editor and writer for a magazine specializing in bringing oddities to light. Her mysterious publisher send her exploring through a city that becomes by degrees ever stranger. From a sunrise of automated cars working in silent precision to a possible vampire, she discovers that people are both odder and more ordinary as they might seem. Especially if you're eating datura seeds. Especially when the legendary Voynich Manuscript is involved.
"[Her work] contains scenes of startling beauty and strangeness." – Locus
Leena Krohn is one of the most respected Finnish writers of her generation. She was awarded the prestigious Finlandia Prize for best novel for Matemaattisia olentoja tai jaettuja unia (Mathematical Beings). Her short novel Tainaron: Mail from Another World, first published in English in 2004, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.
Anna Volmari is a Finnish, internationally educated freelance translator. J. Robert Tupasela is a Finnish-Australian, New-York-raised translator.
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Leena Krohn
Leena Krohn (born 1947) is one of the most distinctive and guileless geniuses of contemporary Finnish literature. She has written poetry, children's books, novels, fables, short stories, essays and texts that combine all the aforementioned genres with the possibilities of science and fantasy.
Unlike with other Finnish writers in general, the history of the country's literature provides no easy model for Krohn. In Krohn's production, fable-like contents serve philosophic and metaphysical ends, while on the other hand its scientific aspects may be viewed jointly as a subgenre of fantasy and fable.
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