Kirjaseuranta arto paasilinna biography

Among WRITERS In Finland

Among writers born in Finland, Arto Paasilinna ranks 5.

The Paasilinna's had seven children, five sons and two daughters, including the writer Erno Paasilinna; the author, MEP and TV personality Reino Paasilinna; the painter Sirpa Paasilinna-Schlagenwarth; and the writer Mauri Paasilinna.

Paasilinna studied at the General and Elementary School Line at the Lapland Folk Academy.

At just twelve years old, he started working as a lumberjack on the family ranch and later worked in the forests of Southern Lapland. Fast-paced, light and humorous in style, many of these narratives can be described as picaresque adventure stories with often a satirical angle towards modern life. Certain of his stories have been described as modern fables, such as The Year of the Hare, which sets an ex-journalist's quest for authentic life and values in the Finnish backwoods against the emptiness and meaninglessness of modern consumer society.

Amounting to nearly a book per year, his Finnish publisher is quoted as saying, “The annual Paasilinna is as much an element of the Finnish autumn as falling birch leaves.” He was also awarded numerous literary awards and honors including the Prix Littéraire Air Inter (1989) and the Giuseppe Acerbi Prize (1994).

In 2009, Arto published his final novel, the aptly named Alive at His Own Funeral, and decided to spend the rest of his life writing only for himself.

Whether writing about zeppelins, murderous grandmothers, conversations with God, or a broken pact among robbers, there seemed to be no subject to which Arto could not turn his hand.

Every so often one of his books, which often made bestseller lists in Finland and abroad, would strike a particular note with the reading public.

Arto spent the entire Autumn that year speaking to readers on the phone, all of whom claimed to have been saved by the book.

Across his career, Arto’s profile grew from an author popular in Finland to one able to find an audience across the globe. Before him are Pehr Evind Svinhufvud (1861), Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865), Aki Kaurismäki (1957), Mikael Agricola (1510), Vissarion Belinsky (1811), and Mauno Koivisto (1923).

At the weekly magazine Apu, he was an editor (1968–1970) and later a columnist (1975–1988).

In 1975, at the age of 33, Paasilinna found journalism growing "more superficial and meaningless" and desired a change; that summer, he sold his boat to fund the writing of The Year of the Hare. His son, Petteri Paasilinna, recalls how he would always rise in time for a 9:30am start, blasting away at his typewriter with his aggressive two-finger technique and filling his family home with a cacophony of productivity, writing a chapter or so per day.

Before him are Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Thomas A. Steitz, John Gavin, Aaron Klug, Burt Reynolds, and Sondra Locke. He recalls the fearsome power of the Finnish thunderstorms, evocative of the Nordic gods, as he spent many nights of his early twenties on duty as a fire watcher high above the canopy of the forests of Lapland.

In April 2010 he was moved to a convalescent home for recovery, and his son named as his treasurer.

As of 2009, Paasilinna has published about 12 non-fiction books and 35 novels, with almost one novel each year from 1972 to 2009 (except 1973, 1978, 2002): as his publishers say, "The annual Paasilinna is as much an element of the Finnish autumn as falling birch leaves." He is "constantly being translated into new languages", and 18 of his books have been translated overall into at least 27 languages: the translations beyond neighboring Scandinavian countries include: 16 into German, 11 into French, 9 into Slovenian, 8 into Italian, 6 into Dutch, 5 into Spanish, 4 into Korean, and 2 into English, Ukrainian and Catalan.

His parents were Väinö Paasilinna (1902–1950, born Gullstén, changed his surname in 1934 after a family conflict) and Hilda-Maria Paasilinna (1908–1983, born Niva). The multinational castaways (Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and English) give Paasilinna ample opportunity to poke fun at issues of language domination and national stereotypes.

Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in 41 different languages on Wikipedia. He still writes journalism articles and has been a columnist on Finnish radio.

In 2000, Paasilinna was included in the 6th edition of literary critic Pekka Tarkka^(fi)'s dictionary Suomalaisia nykykirjailijoita ("Finnish Literary Authors", 1st ed.

Translated into 27 languages, over seven million copies of his books have been sold worldwide, and he has been claimed as "instrumental in generating the current level of interest in books from Finland". Before him are Tove Jansson (1914), Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1888), Mika Waltari (1908), and Mikael Agricola (1510). Take The Year of the Hare, which achieved cult status in France; or A Charming Mass Suicide, a book that dealt so

empathetically with themes of suicide that Finnish authorities reported a 35% decrease in suicides in 1990—the year that it was published.