Pirkko Saisio The Red Book of Farewells

For fans of Tove Ditlevsen and Karl Ove Knausgaard, an enigmatic work of autofiction set in a time of leftist politics and criminalized sexuality. Pirkko Saisio's autofictional novel, in Mia Spangenberg's tender translation, is a mesmerizing account of radical politics and sexual awakening in a series of farewells--to her mother, to the idealism of youth, to friends and lovers, and finally to her grown daughter. The novel embeds readers in a delirious Finland, where art and communist politics are hopelessly intertwined, and where queer love, still a crime, thrives in underground bars. But then one morning in 2002, on a remote island off the coast of Finland, the narrator Pirkko Saisio informs her publisher that she's accidentally deleted her latest manuscript, The Red Book of Farewells . Playful and mysterious, The Red Book of Farewells is a work that stoically embraces the small revolutions of moving on.