GUEST MODE
By Miki Liukkonen
Vierastila, WSOY 2023, 547pp
The posthumous literary masterpiece by award-winning Finnish author, who has been compared to David Lynch and David Foster Wallace.
Nominated for the Finlandia Prize for Fiction 2023
Winner of the Readers’ Choice Finlandia Prize for Fiction 2023
Where are you when you’re away from home?
Ren Dawn is suffering from inventor’s block when a series of fiascos compel him to go to Cancún and undergo hormone treatment, where he experiences delirium and out of body experiences that give him a look at his life from the outside. And then there’s Louis Dufuette…
Guest Mode is a dazzling novel written in Liukkonen’s signature maximalist style. It’s about thinking, disappointment in life as the ultimate goal, world history as the evolution of a resting heartbeat, and a little bit of everything. Seatbelts are required but they’re not part of the novel. Behind the novel’s light-hearted narrative lurks something serious, heartfelt, and sincere, begging the question: Where are you when you’re away from home?
An allusive, philosophical, humorous novel that rejects humour by an author worthy of comparison to DeLillo, Foster Wallace, and Pynchon.
RIGHTS SOLD: Finland WSOY (orig.)
Materials available: English sample and synopsis, Finnish edition
Praise:
“Dazzling…from beginning to end, a startling, but also joyful, portrayal of life”
“The work is a fragmented cornucopia, where externality, the longing for love, the shock of the mind and deep humanity are put into words with masterful brilliance. ”
“An incorruptible writer-thinker”
made his literary breakthrough with the astonishingly accomplished O (WSOY 2017), an encyclopaedic narrative about ordinary people and extraordinary events, becoming the most discussed literary tour de force in recent years. The novel was shortlisted for the 2017 Finlandia Prize for Fiction, and the 2018 Runeberg Prize. Liukkonen was a multi-talented artist, who felt equally at home in music and poetry as he did in literature.
His final novel, Guest Mode, was published posthumously in Finland on 18 September 2023 to widespread critical acclaim, confirming Liukkonen’s accession to Finland’s literary firmament.
