MOONSCAPE AND OTHER STORIES
by Mika Waltari
Kuun maisema, WSOY 1953, 272 pp
An unmissable collection of novellas by Finland’s Mika Waltari
Mika Waltari considered his short novels, or novellas, to be the very best in his writing. His publisher WSOY initially refused to publish the novellas due to their dark tones and even immoral nature. Waltari kept them in his drawer, re-writing and polishing them over the years before WSOY finally accepted them for publication.
A collection called Moonscape led Mika Waltari to being awarded the prestigious Finland State Prize for Literature in 1954.
The collection features six novellas — Something in a Man, An Iceland of Ice, Moonscape, Before the Twilight of the Gods, The Tie from Paris, and Freedom of a Man.
The English translation included also Goldilocks, one of Waltari’s darkest novellas, and was published by Putnam’s in 1954.
According to literary critics, Waltari’s novellas have stood the test of time and they remain the very best in Waltari’s writing.
Praise for MOONSCAPE AND OTHER STORIES:
“In its solidity, intensity, and purity of style, it is the noblest prose. ”
“The novellas testify not only for skill or virtuosity, but for mastery. ”
“Where ‘The Egyptian’ and ‘The Adventurer’ were tapestries aglow with color and teeming with incident, the new book is a panel of chiaroscuros. It presents a world of unemployment, hate, violence, frustration. (...) What love there is, is lurid - fierce and doomed incandescencies across the wintry landscape of an unintelligible planet rolling eternally through an idiot void”.”
“Somehow [Waltari] seems to get inside the skin of the women of his stories more than… the men. And an unsavoury lot they are, with queer aberrations, excesses, abnormalities. Youth appears in strange guise too, misunderstood, thwarted, distorted by adult lack of comprehension, but oddly appealing in its very strangeness.”
is the most popular 20th century Finnish writer who is best known for his magnum opus The Egyptian. Over a career that spanned five decades, Waltari published well over 100 works, of which 200 translations have been made. His works include at least 30 novels, 20 plays and 15 novellas, as well as short stories, poems, screenplays and essays. In 1957 he was appointed to the Academy of Finland, having previously won the state literature award five times. Waltari’s works have been translated into over 40 languages.
Author photo © Suomi Filmin taidekuvaamo / WSOY
