BOOKPATHS

Finland

Ali Smith applauds Finnish Novelist Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver, published in English for the first time.

Jansson's own texts are always honed to perfection, given a lightness that proves deceptive, an ease of surface which, like ice over a lake, allows you rare access to something a lot riskier and more profound. 'Rarely do books give as clear an impression as yours that they have simply matured to the point of inevitability,' Jansson's editor at Bonnier, her Swedish publisher, wrote to her when she was struggling with difficult work; in many ways, 'The True Deceiver 'is a book about artistic maturation as well as human coming of age. – from “A Winter’s Tale,” by Ali Smith, The Guardian

Eatonville, Florida, U.S.

Damien Cave visits Zora Neale Hurston’s Eatonville, Florida.

“And yet in many ways, the town she described — and made a tourist stop by including it in the Florida travel guide produced by the Depression-era Federal Writers’ Project — remains a place apart. It is as independent, dignified and private as it was in the 1930s, when Hurston wrote that rural blacks in Florida often resisted sharing their true thoughts with the white man, who ‘knowing so little about us, he doesn’t know what he is missing.’” – from “In a Town Apart, the Pride and Trials of Black Life,” by Damien Cave, The New York Times

Finland

On October 10th, Finland celebrates Aleksis Kivi Day, one of its “official Flag Days.” The day honors the “Finnish national author, poet, creator of modern Finnish literature.” A statue of Aleksis Kivi stands in front of the Finnish National Theatre in Helsinki.

Photograph from Wikipedia.

Finland

The Guardian has published the first archived page on Culture Vulture’s “World Literature Tour.” Visit their website for a tour of Finnish Literature.