Finlandia Prize to Jussi Valtonen

The Finlandia Prize (the major literary honor in Finland) was announced yesterday. This year’s award goes to Jussi Valtonen for his novel He eivät tiedä mitä tekevät (“They Know Not What They Do”), published in September by Tammi. The book is a contemporary novel that reaches to a speculative near future, exploring (among other things) the development of technology and its effects on privacy and morality.

The prize winner was selected by Professor Anne Brunila who said about the book:

They Know Not What They Do is a mind-blowing work. It illuminates modern life with a rare sense of perception, without pointing fingers or moralizing. The reader finds the moral in him-or-herself. Ecoterrorism, animal activism, academic research, new technology with its digital universes, and a future in which reality and behaviour can be altered with technology and medicine, are all put into the spotlight.

The Finlandia Prize is given by the Finnish Book Foundation and is worth 30 000 €. More info about the book and the author, and reading materials, is available from the Elina Ahlback Literary Agency.