Passing Things
Following the success of her Finlandia Prize-winning novel Compartment No. 6, Rosa Liksom returns to very short prose, a genre she pioneered, and a medium in which she is still an undisputed master.
Passing Things is a quick-moving pageant of citizens of today, with all their worries and troubles and all the love burning in their hearts. A single parent, a spiritual guide, an election observer, an estate planner, a genealogist, a poacher, a tourist in Turkey, a returnee to Finland, a tipsy policemen, the world’s greatest steel worker, a young shopper, a forgotten woman, a rejected and bitter man, these are its characters. Municipal mergers and the China phenomenon are discussed, the plight of the elderly is puzzled over, immigrants are eyed suspiciously, as are killer moose, angry bees, thieving wolverines, peacocks, and magpies. From this multivoiced, multiform testimony a single voice emerges, a soliloquy of modern Finnish society.
Passing Things is a mirror on our mental condition in the here and now. If the image we see is as black as a polar night, it’s not the mirror’s fault – or Rosa Liksom’s. She has an unflinching eye, an infallible ear, and a gift for writing about the joys and disappointments of ordinary people, which is a great good fortune for the rest of us.
Reviews
"... keep in mind that Rosa Liksom is already a classic. It is she who brought our literature the lightning quick short story as well as idiomatic language. For a single writer, these are quite sufficient qualifications. "
Aamulehti, Tampere Finland
"Rosa Liksom has a fantastic ability to thoroughly master disparate genres: her novels and fragmentary prose form a large chapter in the history of modern form in Finnish literature."
Helsingin Sanomat
"Liksom is the mother of Finnish flash fiction.”
Helsingin Sanomat
Endorsements
”Her pen is like an arctic knife with eastern flavours.”
– Sofi Oksanen
Rights sold
Czech rights sold to Pistorius & Olšanská
Hungarian Rights sold to Noran Libro Kiadó.
Latvian rights sold to Zvaigzne.
Swedish rights sold to Wahlström&Widstrand