All prizes Finland
Kaunokirjallisuuden Finlandia-palkinto
Finland · Since 1984 · For books in Finnish or Swedish
Awarded each autumn by the Finnish Book Foundation (Suomen Kirjasäätiö) to a Finnish novel of the year, written in Finnish or Swedish; a board nominates three to six books and a single selector picks the winner.
The Finnish Book Foundation founded the prize in 1984. Until 1989 non-fiction competed with fiction, and until 1992 any work of fiction could win; since 1993 only novels are eligible. Since then a selection board has named three to six nominees each autumn, and one selector, often a public figure from outside literature, chooses the winner from them. The board grew from three to six members in 2024. Publishers submit the books, and Swedish-language Finnish novels compete alongside Finnish ones: Bo Carpelan, Kjell Westö and Ulla-Lena Lundberg have all won. The prize was first limited to Finnish citizens; the rule was dropped after a Slovak author writing in Finnish was nominated. Separate Finlandia prizes for non-fiction (since 1989) and for children's and youth books (since 1997) are awarded too. The prize is the best-known literary award in Finland and is worth 30,000 euros.
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Finlandia 2023 · Shortlist
Elolliset
Iida Turpeinen · 36 when first published
Novel · 296 pages · Historical, Nature
AI-generated summary:In 1741 the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller sails with Vitus Bering's expedition and finds a giant sea mammal; a century later a governor of Russian Alaska hunts for its skeleton.
Finlandia 2019 · Winner
Bolla
Pajtim Statovci · 29 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Love, War
AI-generated summary:Arsim, a married man in Pristina, falls for Miloš, a medical student he meets at the university, and follows him into an intense affair that lasts until war drives Arsim and his family into exile.
Finlandia 2019 · Shortlist
Vem dödade bambi?
Monika Fagerholm · 58 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Crime, Family
AI-generated summary:In a fashionable suburb of Helsinki, four boys from well-off families gang-rape a schoolmate at a party. Their mothers try to bury it, until a childhood friend announces he will make a film about the crime.
Finlandia 2015 · Winner
Oneiron
Laura Lindstedt · 39 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:Seven women from different countries, among them a New York performance artist, a Moscow accountant and a Senegalese girl who dreams of modelling, find themselves in a white, empty space in the seconds after their deaths.
Finlandia 2015 · Shortlist
Taivaalta tippuvat asiat
Selja Ahava · 41 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A young girl, Saara, loses her mother to a block of ice that falls from the sky. She and her grieving father move in with her aunt at a manor house, where life goes on in strange ways.
Finlandia 2014 · Winner
He eivät tiedä mitä tekevät
Jussi Valtonen · 40 when first published
Novel · 496 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In Finland, American neuroscientist Joe and Alina, who has put her studies aside, raise baby Samuel. Years later Joe is a star researcher in the US with a new family, and grown-up Samuel is still searching for his place.
Finlandia 2013 · Shortlist
Hägring 38
Kjell Westö · 52 when first published
Novel · 341 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:Helsinki, 1938: the divorced lawyer Claes Thune takes on a capable, guarded clerk, Matilda Wiik. Then one evening, among his old friends of the Wednesday Club, she recognises a man from her past.
Also: Augustpriset 2013 shortlist
Finlandia 2012 · Winner
Is
Ulla-Lena Lundberg · 65 when first published
Novel · 448 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Just after the war, a young priest and his family move into the parsonage of an island parish far out in the archipelago, a place reached only by boat and, in winter, across the ice.
Finlandia 2012 · Shortlist
Nälkävuosi
Aki Ollikainen · 39 when first published
Novel · 144 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:During the great famine, little Mataleena struggles through a snowstorm behind her mother as the family begs its way across a starving land, dreaming of golden St Petersburg.
Finlandia 2011 · Winner
Hytti nro 6
Rosa Liksom · 53 when first published
Novel · 181 pages
AI-generated summary:A young woman travelling across the Soviet Union on the Siberian railway finds herself sharing compartment six with a Russian man.
Finlandia 2010 · Shortlist
Totta
Riikka Pulkkinen · 30 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:Dying of cancer and done with lies, Elsa tells her granddaughter Anna about Eeva, the young nanny who, back in the 1960s, almost broke up Elsa's marriage to Martti.
Finlandia 2009 · Shortlist
Ihmisen osa
Kari Hotakainen · 52 when first published
Novel · 253 pages · Family, Satire
AI-generated summary:Salme Malmikunnas, a retired yarn seller who never reads novels, meets an author at a book fair who has no ideas left. He offers her 7,000 euros for her life story, and she accepts, needing the money.
Finlandia 2008 · Winner
Puhdistus
Sofi Oksanen · 31 when first published
Novel · 416 pages · Historical, Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:In rural Estonia, a year after independence, the elderly Aliide Truu finds a young woman, Zara, unconscious in her garden. Zara says she is running from a violent husband.
Finlandia 2005 · Shortlist
Että hän muistaisi saman
Elina Hirvonen · 30 when first published
Novel · 180 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Helsinki, spring 2003. Instead of a quiet day of reading, Anna must go and see her mentally ill brother on a psychiatric ward, and on the way she relives her family's history and her American boyfriend's.
Finlandia 2005 · Shortlist
Sarasvatin hiekkaa
Risto Isomäki · 44 when first published
Novel · 345 pages · Speculative, Nature
AI-generated summary:Scientists study a drowned city off India's west coast while others, in Finland and on the Greenland ice cap, try to understand and halt the melting of the polar ice.
Finlandia 2003 · Winner
Punainen erokirja
Pirkko Saisio · 54 when first published
Novel · 250 pages · Autofiction, Love, Politics
AI-generated summary:In the politically heated Helsinki of the early 1970s, a young student joins the student theatre, applies to drama school and discovers both her love for women and her calling as a writer.
Finlandia 2002 · Shortlist
Lang
Kjell Westö · 41 when first published
Novel · 180 pages · Love, Crime
AI-generated summary:Christian Lang, a novelist whom most of Helsinki knows as a television talk-show host, falls into a consuming affair; a narrator who heard his account pieces together what came of it.
Finlandia 2001 · Winner
Canal Grande
Hannu Raittila · 45 when first published
Novel · 299 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:A Finnish team of experts arrives in fog-bound Venice to save its palaces from the water: Marrasjärvi, a plain-spoken engineer and family man, and Saraspää, a specialist with more refined tastes.
Finlandia 2000 · Winner
Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi
Johanna Sinisalo · 42 when first published
Novel · 236 pages · Speculative, Love, Nature
AI-generated summary:In the backyard of the building where he lives, a young photographer finds a wild troll, a creature known from folk tales, and takes it home at once, sure that he must keep it.
Finlandia 2000 · Shortlist
Vastavalo
Pirkko Saisio · 51 when first published
Novel · 278 pages · Autofiction, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:A writer revisits her school years and the many roles of her later life, asking how a person builds a self, in a fragmentary continuation of an autobiographical story.