YOURS, MARGOT
by Meri Valkama
Sinun, Margot, WSOY, 2021, 556pp
Winner of the prestigious Helsingin Sanomat Debut of the Year Prize
Rights sold to 7 territories + TV
Over 75 000 copies sold
A magnificent novel about the fragility of memory and the power of silence by a gifted, new voice from the Nordics.
In the early 1980s, journalist Markus Siltanen relocates with his young family from Helsinki to East Berlin to work as a foreign correspondent. Vilja, his daughter, spends her childhood immersed in the East German way of living and thinking until her family eventually returns to Finland. Over time, Vilja’s memories of her childhood dissolve, much like the country itself.
In 2011, after her father’s death, Vilja finds a bundle of letters addressed to ‘Erich’ from someone in Berlin called ‘Margot’, with whom her father evidently had a passionate relationship. Vilja decides track down Margot and returns to Berlin. The transformed city still holds some memories for her but the most important pieces seem to be missing. Her search for Margot tears open everything she thought she knew about her parents and her childhood.
Rich with detail that will immerse the reader in East Berlin before die Wende, this is an accomplished and suspenseful European novel stylistically comparable to works by Ian McEwan and Sarah Waters, Meri Valkama is a gifted storyteller from the Nordics who truly captures the joy of literature.
RIGHTS SOLD: Finland WSOY (orig.), Film & TV: Aamu Film Company (option), Denmark: Gutkind, Estonia: Hea Lugu, Germany: Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, Hungary: Partvonal, Lithuania: Alma Littera, Norway: Bonnier Forlag, Sweden: Bazar Förlag
Materials available: English sample and synopsis, Finnish edition
Praise:
“Yours, Margot is the proof that the art of the novel is still very much alive. It is a skilfully narrated, elegant work that pulls the reader in in a way that is impossible to resist. . (…) The character arcs are touching. The best thing about the book is that the characters’ personalities take shape throughout the novel, all the way up to the final pages. Valkama’s beautiful, refined language makes reading a pleasure. (…) Reading this novel is truly an experience.”
“A debut novelist’s remarkably mature and controlled work that speaks to our whole continent.”
“Powerful novel about a Finnish family and forbidden love… Establishes a well-functioning interweaving of the small story – the story of a Finnish family in East Berlin – and the big story, the story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War… A bit of a page-turner… Your Margot is highly recommended.”
is a Finnish journalist, writer, and deputy city councillor based in Helsinki. She spent part of her childhood in East Berlin and, as an adult she received a scholarship to study at the Freie Universität Berlin, where she researched and produced documentaries about journalists who worked in the former German Reich. Valkama debuted with her novel Yours, Margot (WSOY 2021), for which she was awarded Helsingin Sanomat Debut of the Year Prize in 2021.
She lives in Helsinki and is working on her second novel.
Author photo by Otto Virtanen
