Sofi Oksanen: What It’s Like To Write About Russia

 

Photo: Sofioksanen.com

Sofi Oksanen: What It’s Like To Write About Russia

by Sofi Oksanen

In 2003 I published my first novel in Finland, Stalin’s Cows, which dealt with the recent history of Estonia. I was confronted by journalists who called my book “anti-soviet”, at one time a very negative epithet, a word that belonged to the traditional vocabulary of Finlandized Finland. I was also confronted by leftist journalists whose knowledge of the Soviet Union was so flimsy that they asked in amazement why nothing had been written in the Soviet press about the deportations of Estonians, which discussed in my novel.

Sofi Oksanen / When the Doves Disappeared / Review

When the Doves Disappeared

When the Doves Disappeared (Kun kyyhkeset katosivat, 2012; tr. from the Finnish by Lola Rogers, 2015) is a smart-paced, suspenseful novel that explores the life defining consequences of choosing loyalty over betrayal, authenticity over self-preservation.

A Lion In A Cage by Sofi Oksanen

 

A Lion In A Cage

by Sofi Oksanen10 June 2015

Sofi Oksanen examines the contrasting literary histories of Finland and Estonia and how they have shaped their distinct historical paths and the impact of those legacies on their approaches to current geopolitical challenges in a speech delivered in Riga, Latvia.

A LIFE IN WRITING

Interview

Sofi Oksanen: ‘We know about British colonialism. Russian colonialism is not well known’

This article is more than 9 years old

Interview by Luke Harding

On the eve of her latest novel’s publication in English, the Finnish publishing sensation talks about divided families, the double occupation of Estonia and ‘Putin’s poodles’

Luke Harding

Saturday 18 September 2015

For a Finnish writer to be translated into English is an unusual event; over the last decade, only 40 or 50 Finnish novels have appeared in the US and UK – a “strange” state of affairs, according to Sofi Oksanen. But Oksanen isn’t merely a Finnish writer who has broken through. The author of Purge (2008), which sold over a million copies, is an international publishing sensation, frequently likened to Stieg Larsson. Only one Finnish author outsells her, Oksanen jokes: the late Tove Jansson, creator of the lovable, bohemian Moomin family.

From “Baby Jane” by Sofi Oksanen

FICTION

From “Baby Jane”

By Sofi Oksanen

Translated from Finnish by Lola Rogers

June 1, 2010

Published in The Queer Issue

Finland / Estonia

The office building across the street lit up like a Christmas tree every morning. The fluorescent lights chased each other pling-pling-pling, lighting up from one room to the next, pulling the people along after them. I watched the same performance every morning while smoking a cigarette in my robe at Joonatan’s unpleasantly sun-filled window. I only woke up that early if Joonatan was going to work. I didn’t have to wake up, but I did anyway, got out of bed, put high-strength toner on my face, drank my morning coffee and poured some for Joonatan, listened to the rustle of the morning-fresh newspaper, and brewed some more coffee and felt the office building’s fluorescent lights creep up from one floor to the next. Joonatan always started his day by turning on the fluorescent light in the kitchen, but I always turned it off again and turned on some other light, something that provided at least a little warmth.

Purge by Sofi Oksanen / Review

PURGE

by Sofi Oksanen

The novel was notably better than the European one in 2010 and it seems to me this novel really interesting and good, like the author, to say that this novel focuses on the Soviet world of Estonia and the dialogue between the young woman and Zara’s wife and the Elder Aliide is simply wonderful, a link is established through the pages, set in 1992, but among this story run other parallel family in the 50s, as well as the depraved life of Zara in Berlin, but to me taste is a surprising and absorbing novel where human relationships shine above all argumentation, highly recommended.

Sofi Oksan / Stalin's queues

Sofin Oksanen
STALIN´S QUEUES

Stalin’s cow is a goat! The Danish title of the debut novel «Stalins Køer», by Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen, is fantastic. It both means “Stalins’ cows”, but also “Stalin’s queues” – those famous queues in front of the socialist stores, to which Oksanen makes frequent references. Those queues where did not matter what was sold, because anything was sold, everybody needed it. Otherwise, «Stalin’s cow is a goat» is the sentence that actually refers to the essence of the novel: the depersonalization and disimulation of him/herself.

 

Sofi Oksanen by the memorial to the victims of communism in Tallinn, Estonia. Photo by Sofi Oksanen's official Facebook page.

The past is a prologue: Russia’s bogus referenda come from the USSR playbooks

Sofi Oksanen, a Finnish-Estonian playwright and an acclaimed author of the novel “Purge”, says that by organising “referenda” in the occupied Ukrainian territories, Russia is following the same tactics used by the Soviet Union’s occupation of the Baltic states.

29 September 2022

About the “referenda” in Ukraine. Many have asked, why would Russia even make the effort to stage the “referenda” that look so fake to any Western country. But let’s go back a bit and look at the Baltic states under the Soviet occupation.

Sofi Oksanen / What westerners weren’t supposed to ser

 

Oksanen has her sights set on her next two novels.Photo: Toni Härkönen

WHAT WESTERNERS WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO SEE

Finnish Estonian author Sofi Oksanen causes a stir with the subject matter and success of her novel “Purge,” which has won just about every prize it possibly 

Finnish Estonian writer Sofi Oksanen talks with us about her bestselling novel Purge. The first book ever to win both the Runeberg Prize and the Finlandia Prize, it also took the Nordic Council Literature Prize. By the end of 2012, four years after publication in Finnish, Purge had been translated into 38 languages.

 

© Trine Søndergaard, Now That You Are Mine #5, 1997–2000 Courtesy of Martin Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen & Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

THE DARK HISTORY IN SOFI OKSANEN’S WRITING

Written by: Ebba Witt-Brattström | 1. December 2014

“And yet at the same time, I was so proud of my Baltic roots. Softly and tenderly, painfully and bitterly, as if they were the birth of my disabled child.” (Stalin’s Cows).

Sofi Oksanen is a literary sensation. Born in Finland in 1977, to a Finnish father and an Estonian mother, she writes in Finnish but calls herself a Finnish-Estonian writer. As a declared feminist, she speaks openly about men’s violence against women and Putin’s rule in Russia. She is internationally renowned, her novels have been translated into some forty different languages, and, she is the recipient – often, as the youngest writer ever – of several literary awards, the Finlandia Prize in 2008, the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2010, and the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize in Literature in 2013. 

 

Sofi Oksanen / photo: Gábor Valuska

INTERVIEW

Sofi Oksanen: Art and Literature Help People to Feel Empathy

23 December 2021

Maybe the big narration of our time is the narration of who gets to control the data and the information. That seems to be essential for both dictators, authoritarian rulers and social media giants... – says Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen in the latest edition of The State of Things, an interview series.