Graniittimies

It is 1922. Klara and Ilja, newlyweds brimming with hope, abandon their old lives and Finnish names and cover six hundred kilometres on skis to reach Petrograd and help construct utopia. Like thousands of Finnish Reds who fled or were deported east after the civil war, they meet privation instead of a workers' paradise. Ilja, the dutiful Bolshevik, settles into an armchair that bears a state plaque; Klara works with the city's swarms of homeless children, organising soup kitchens, gymnastics and training, and adopts two of them, Genja and Dunja. Their friends make a vivid crowd: Tom the opportunist, Shura, a rising circus performer, sensuous Jelena, Henrik the businessman, gifted Galkin and Ilja's brother Lavr. Then Lenin dies, the city is renamed Leningrad, and its Finnish dreamers become enemies.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

334 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Russia, 1920s–1930s

First published

2014 by Otava

Author's age

50 when first published

ISBN

9789511280972 (original)