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I am a big, big fan of Robert Harris. I found his book Enigma when my interest in the code breaking of Bletchley Park in WW2 was at its peak; that mix of fact and fiction blew me away and it remains his best book in my mind. On a par with it there is Fatherland, the alternative history classic, and almost level, Pompeii. Archangel is also not to be missed.

So, when I started The Fear Index, I was positively titillated with anticipation - a new Harris is always good news.

Within 50 pages, my enthusiasm was dampened somewhat, and after 150 pages, I was downright disappointed. This tale of a brilliant physicist who leaves CERN to write the best algorithmic investment system ever seen was just not what I have always liked best in Harris.

In my mind, Harris shines when he tells the tale of the single man, cast in a role by chance and personal talent, conquering insurmountable odds. Tom Jericho in Enigma, Xavier March in Fatherland, and Fluke Kelso in Archangel have all been set in a situation where only their personal integrity and hard work will win the day.

Not so in The Fear Index. Harris writes well as always, but the picture he draws of Alex Hoffmann has none of the usual charm of a Harris hero. Hoffmann is arrogant, talented, and definitely the man for the job, but his almost autistic lack of interaction doesn't endear him to the reader. Alex's relationship with his artist wife Gabrielle is superficial and uninteresting, even if the culmination point of that relationship in the art gallery raises eyebrows in the best tradition of Harris' books.

Another thing that worried me much was that Harris ventures into Clancyist methods of adding technobabble to add excitement. I was especially disappointed with the small things that he's always done really well: risking that I will be called a muppet by some people, I'll say that CPUs do not hum - transformers do, and there are no files in a computer's registry. Such small items become more and more evident towards the end of the book.

And the crucial element of any book of this type, namely suspension of disbelief, just didn't go far enough. I will not disclose the plot, but at 2/3 of the book it fell flat for me and I read the rest merely to see what happens, not on the edge of the seat enjoying every moment of it.

I will repeat that he writes just as well as ever (with a few somewhat tired similes, a first for me in his books), and to some people, especially in the world of finance, this may be more interesting than to the average lay person, but my expectations were not met, and I will remain in wait for his next book to see if he goes back to creating a truly interesting character in a complex and dangerous situation.
]]> Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:09:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=2
Of course, such a situation provides ample opportunities for suspense writers. I've read about ten books on the Enigma, its precursors, and successors, but I have to say Harris delivers such a wonderful novel on the singular starting point, which is the near-invincibility of Enigma. The one flaw in Enigma was that even if it yielded astronomical permutations for its ciphertext, a letter would never get encoded in itself. With this wedge into the cipher, Bletchley Park turned the war around.

Enter Tom Jericho, a brilliant mathematician straight out of Cambridge's mathematical Tripos exams. He delivers crucial input for the cracking of the coded messages, falls in love with one of the girls in the Huts where the hard work is done, and suffers a mental breakdown. His medical leave is cut short when the officers who run Bletchley Park need his services again, but Claire, his love, has disappeared.

After WWII, especially now that we live in an age of information and computers, it is easy to forget what a Herculean task it was to crack Enigma, and that the basis for all British success was lain by Polish mathematicians who reconstructed Enigma from the messages, without having access to a live one. The diverse set of people, from Classical scholars to crossword and chess champs, all the way to musicians and mathematicians, performed an amazing task of intellect and we owe something to them today. Just remember Alan Turing.

Harris spins a tight web on intrigue and narrow escapes and this is a pageturner if there ever was one. Having read extensively on Bletchley Park before reading this book, I am full of admiration for his skills in taking real events and people, and embedding his fictional ones in the mesh so that there's no telling who is for real and who is not.

That question pesters Jericho all through the book too. He trusts few people, mostly himself, and is proven right in doing so. The culprit in the book remains hidden into the end, but at that point, when all is revealed, the reader marvels at the author's skill of making all facts available so that they come together so well.

The final outcome of the book is as surprising as it is convincing and believable. I can recommend Harris' Fatherland, Pompeii, and with some reservation, Ghost, but for sheer brilliance in concept and execution, Enigma remains in my mind the best of his books.]]> Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:56:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=3
The Great War of 1914-1918 included many battles that have become legendary, perhaps none more so than that of Verdun. A separate effort, aimed at alleviating the pressure the French were experiencing at Verdun, became known as the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916. The story of this bloodiest of all British battles has been admirably told by Martin Middlebrook.

This book is the tale of human courage of the men in the trenches, dimwitted thinking of generals, unfounded belief in the power of the artillery, and above all, the honor and devotion to duty of the single infantry private. It was believed that a week of artillery bombardment would pulverize the German defences, and allow the British to advance to their targets in parade formations.

This was not to be. The Germans had dug deep, and the amount of barbed wire was staggering. Moreover, the British expected their artillery to cut the German wires and create lanes along which to advance; they also sent out parties to cut holes in the perimeters and marked them with white strips. The artillery didn't manage to cut the wire nearly as well as was expected, and the infantry met huge tangled obstacles along the way.

The biggest blunders were General Rawlinson's decision to delay the onset of the attack after the artillery bombardment was over; the Germans had time to man their machine gun positions, which had survived the bombardment much better than expected, and this enabled them to scythe down thousands of men who walked towards their positions. The Germans couldn't believe it when they saw the British advance methodically and slowly, and the murderous cross-fire slaughtered the British.

Another unbelievable error was not to use the only breakthrough on the right flank to attack the Germans from the side and behind - as well as the decision not to use cavalry. It was the end of the era of the cavalry to be sure, but in this battle, the large cavalry contingent could have made a huge difference, had it been let to advance through a breach and cause havoc in the rear of the Germans. They could only wonder at this decision when their lines became thin and tenuously held, but the British never released the cavalry and thus lost the only chance of success at the Somme.

In a way this battle reminds me of Tarawa and the US Marines. There, too, the belief in the intense naval bombardment caused casualties when the Japanese re-manned their positions right after the bombardment lifted. Hundreds of Marines were killed as they waded ashore in the direct sight of Japanese with their machine guns and artillery.

The US did not lose 57,470 men in casualties as the British did, however. This single day cost the British more than any other day in any war, or indeed, months of other wars. The heartbreaking tale of innocence lost is a key part of this book as Middlebrook confidently relates the fates of men who joined up with their friends to form units such as the "Manchester Pals" and "Grimsby Chums". These men fought and died with their friends, and in the process, those who survived ceased to believe in their country which had sacrificed them.

This book is an excellent starting point if you want to read quality books on war. Middlebrook's series on the Bomber Command of WW2 is unrivalled, as is his book "Convoy" which tells the story of the bitter sea battles of the Atlantic through the eyes of men on one such journey.
]]> Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:23:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=4
The biggest thing of course was finding a new publisher for Tulagi Hotel. Diane Nelson of PfoxChase Publishing is one of the powerhouses of the new Indie publishing world. She incessantly finds new people whose writing appeals to her, and as she publishes these books, more people get a chance to see them. Needless to say I am very happy that my writing was to her liking, as she has done a massive amount of work to promote the book.

I am even happier of the fact that Diane will publish my short story collection, "Filtered Light and Other Stories" in both book and e-book format. In these days it is not a given that a book will see the light of day in both formats, but for me, up here in Finland. having it in book form will be a big part of the marketing campaign. The book will be out in February 2012.

What else? I was mentioned in a couple of newspapers, namely The Helsinki Times, which wrote an interesting article of the new breed of Finnish writers, namely those who write in English. The link to the article is to be found in the Reviews section.

If you ask a Finn today to name one, chances are they will only remember Hannu Rajaniemi and his brilliant "The Quantum Thief" but there's more than just him and me; especially in the field of science fiction and speculative fiction, there are many who are about to make the quantum leap into writing in a foreign language. The Finnish Scifi scene has been given valuable exposure through Jeff Vandermeer, a premier proponent of Scifi globally.

On the speculative fiction front I was glad to gain access to The Cosmos Pen magazine, which allowed me a short story space as well as a chance to write of my path to publication. This work is now contiuing in the next edition of the Finnish language version, Kosmoskynä. I translated my short story "The Dispatchers" for it, and it will be out in January. Anne Leinonen, a Finnish author, has been of enormous assistance in this field for me.

In August I took advantage of the wonderful Arkadia International Book Shop's offer to come and give a talk on the origins of Tulagi Hotel. The bookstore is truly unique in Finland, and the event itself turned out to be a warm and lively discussion on the new paradigm of publishing, on top of the tale of the book. I will probably go and arrange a book launch for the short stories there too, as the proprietor Ian Bourgeot has an extensive mailing list of literary-minded people.

At the writing of this, I have some 23,000 words in diverse short stories that are labeled "work in progress". I have to confess I have not worked on writing in the past 3 months due to work pressures, but I am confident I will again start writing soon after I get the new courses running and have some spare brain capacity. .,You may therefore expect to see some new stories appear along the Sun that now begins its slow but sure crawling towards our Northern hemisphere.

I wish all my readers a very successful and enjoyable year of 2012!
]]> Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:20:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=5 To start off, I don't usually read courtroom drama. I've done the Legal 101 reading books by Grisham, and I have enjoyed the early two or three, but since that I've not touched the genre.

One of the causes for that is that the American legal system is very different from the one we have in Finland, and it's like learning a new game to be able to understand what happens. This usually leads to info dumps and lots of backtracking for the reader to understand what happened.

Pete Morin's book succeeds brilliantly in carrying the story and offering the uninitiated reader just the right amount of information; the legal story is easy to follow and it is very interesting too. Paul Forté's plight in the maelstrom of a corruption trial is believable in the extreme. There is none of the "As you know, Bob,..." type of explanatory tirade.

Mr Morin cuts the picture of Forté so close he becomes very real. I happen to have a brother with the same attitude towards the game of golf that I could relate to people that Forté has to explain his stance on the game. It also serves vey well as the glue that bonds together the world view of honor codes that Forté has.

The human interest side of this book is also handled very capably; I was hooked by the character of Shannon right after she had the nerve to ask Forté a question at his first meeting with the jury, and it had precious little to do with the trial. I should also say that Morin is an adept observer of emotions and the effect they have on humans - his portrayal of Forté's broken marriage is on a par with John Updike's Rabbit books.

The variety of characters appearing in the book is quite large, but they all serve a purpose and there are no superficial, pasted-on personnel. Of the side characters my favorite was Sidney Hartfield, the 90+ year old former SEC official. Morin has considerable talent in imbuing his characters with just the right feel; Hartfield especially brought chuckles to me as I read. Ah, chuckles: there's many a moment in this book when you laugh out loud because Morin knows the world he writes of and has the linguistic wit to bring it out too. I am envious of his one-liners and sarcasm.

All in all, I think you can't go wrong if you are in search of a quick-paced book with twists and turns, intriguing plot, wine and osso bucco. This book is to be highly recommended.
]]> Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:16:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=6
Now I have read the entire book in its final form, called Quintessence, and Andrew Meek has put together a really strong debut novel.

Alexander Staalman, physicist, husband, grieving man, an altogether human character, takes us on a tour of mental breakdown, quantum physics, cosmology, and the deepest questions possible: what is this thing called Life, and how can we, conglomerations of atoms consisting of mainly void space, be able to think about it?

The eminent plus points of the book are (in no particular order) depth, honesty, force, intellect, inquisitiveness and beauty.

By depth I mean the way Meek has invested countless hours and massive effort to write a book that manages bind together quantum physics and cosmology, as well as everything that walls in between these two extremes. Staalman ponders believably and interestingly how it can be possible for humans to think - it's just electric current flowing between synapses that are mere atoms in close proximity. And is thinking real? If someone has a thought, is that thought real? Is anything actually and verifiably real?

Honesty is apparent in Staalman's anguished quest to set right a horrible injustice rendered on his beloved wife, Millie. The guilt he experiences over the pain he caused her is rendered in such detail that the reader is wishing to absolve him all the time, but the need for Staalman to correct past deeds, which is of course not possible in our concept of time, forces him to think about time in terms of non-linearity. This is where the book gets to be somewhat challenging, but the author invests sufficient time and space to illustrate his ideas, and all becomes clear at some point.

The force of the book is in the mental breakdowns Stallman experiences. I have often wondered what it must be like to have one of these, and after reading this book I can safely say I wish such events happening to no one. Meek writes with such terrifying clarity of what it's like to feel sanity slip away that the text actually had me shivering more than once.

Intellectually this is one of the most challenging books I've read in a while. Sure, I am a longtime fan of Carl Sagan and cosmology, and I have read all the reports on quantum teleport and how Schrödinger's Cat must be doing these days, but man... this book gets you going really. Meek binds together thought experiments and real-life science so effortlessly that I found myself checking Wikipedia every five pages. I have nothing but admiration for his capability of bringing all of this together.

Inquisitiveness is a natural part of this book. We all wonder about life from time to time and then check to see what's on the telly tonight, but Andrew Meek sets the table for a full feast of questions. How can it be that when he thinks, then writes, then sets to type, uploads the book, and as I download it, I get to see what he thought? But surely all is just electric charges between our synapses! There can't be anything more than electric signals - or is there?

And the beauty... there is beauty in this book. It's in the way electrons spin around the nucleus, and how these atoms self-assemble into molecules, substances, cognitive humans, solar systems and ultimately galaxies. All is from the same source, and yet, nothing is alike to another substance. Alexander's and Millie's love story is hauntingly beautiful too, and even if this seems weird to say, I'll say there's beauty in Alexander's madness.

If you like your books thought-provoking, interesting, fact-laden to the hilt, this is for you. On the other hand, if you are up for an easy read, pass this one by. I definitely hope you will be of the former kind and give this book a serious attempt.

If I may nitpick, I would say this book would benefit from one more run-down by an experiences editor. There's a smidgen too much of stuff in it, and some typo issues. None of this is critical; it is much more important to just read the book.

HarperCollins, are you paying attention? ]]> Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:35:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=7
Even if I have always loved short stories as a form, I didn't plan on writing them myself. As you may know by now, it took me twelve years to write and publish Tulia, so during that period I didn't write anything else. Someone has said TH is essentially a collection of short stories, but I beg to differ. I tried hard to write it into solid book form (when I finally decided to push it through).

What launched the short story writing was actually the passing of my father in March, 2008. It must have been part of the grieving process, but I wrote a 1,800 word story called "The Summerhouse". I wrote that almost at one go, gave it a casual polish and asked some of my writer friends to have a look.

To my surprise, it became my trademark in a sense. It has seen publication in two anthologies, the Year Zero Writers website, Escape into Life, and the A3-sized printed Broadsheet in England. And it earned me a seat at the Book Shed author site, where my shorties have received constructive criticism on their way to the reading world.

What surprised me more was the fact that I wrote fifteen more stories in the span of eight months. The Summerhouse was somehow the key to a flood of short story ideas, and I wrote some 60,000 words in those stories. By this time I was part of Year Zero and people such as Dan Holloway and Cody James (and all the others too) helped me find issues in my writing; I like to think I have developed in their tutoring.

At this stage I learned a new word: speculative fiction. This seemed to encompass most of my stories, where there often is a sense of the supernatural or something just a little out-of-place. Dan Holloway tells me he likes my slow chill, and that pleases me very much. This trait is evident in three stories out of four.

Then there was Michael Wells and his idea: he sent forty writers forty-nine songs to be used as story names and inspiration, but nothing more. I was sent Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science", which happens to be an eternal favourite. I combined that song title with a Russian airplane of the 1930's, namely the gigantic, eight-engine Tupolev ANT-20, and wrote a story on the Gulags in the Soviet Union. This was an important story in my own view, as it gave me trust in my own voice. The book, "Words to Music", is available on Amazon.

I have wanted to try different types of short stories too. It seems my flash fiction is attractive to readers, as "Lord Stanton's Horse" won the Flash500 competition in September 2010. A couple of others have been shortlisted there. I have also had some speculative fiction shortlisted in other competitions, as well as published on websites and e-zines. And, I am happy to note, a true-life story called "The Campsite vol. 1" made it to second place at the Global Short Stories of March 2011.

So, all in all, while I am working on a couple of book ideas at the back of the neck, it looks like I will be productive with short stories for some time to come. I have 33 finished stories, 12 in the works, and many story nuggets in the Moleskine. While some of the nuggets turn out to be chicken nuggets, some are indeed better ones that can be wrought into real stories.

I believe short stories are an underrated area of writing. The best short stories can leave you with more to ponder than a full-blown book (you can find many of these on Year Zero Writers, and I am not talking of myself here). You can take a 500 word flash fiction with you in the bus even if you only ride a few stops, and a 2,000 word story is perfect for reading just before falling asleep.

I hope PfoxChase will allow me to publish another set of short stories at some later point, but that of course remains to be seen.
]]> Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:24:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=8
I’ve read Scifi since I was a kid. Lem, Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and Bradbury filled my teen years too and well into adulthood, but then I found myself falling off the genre. For example, everyone touted Ender’s Game as something that everyone should read, but I dropped it halfway through. Since then I have taken up Scifi with lukewarm results.

Now, however, I picked up Greta van der Rol’s The Iron Admiral. I found the same elements in it that I used to like so much in the past: a solid, interesting plotline, good writing, and the most important thing: the Science in Science Fiction delivered so well that it simply doesn’t attack the reader. There are the shift-space-capable battle cruisers, stun guns and alien species, but as in the best of the genre books, they simply exist and are not elaborated upon, let alone explained to death. I especially liked the portable hyperspace gate – when can we buy them?

I have read van der Rol’s excellent debut To Die a Dry Death, in which her voice was clear and lucid already, but I am happy to see development even in this department. The way she carries the story and its multitude of characters is very readable and it is easy to follow the convoluted storyline. Allysha and Saahren come across as very human characters, complete with little quirks and habits. I have never met a live ptorix, but I am willing to take van der Rol’s portrayal of them as a species with their own agenda (and tentacles).

I am willing to recommend this book to any fan of the genre, and even to fans of just romance: you should check how romance can bloom while an interspecies war looms in the future.
]]> Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:35:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=9
In the underworld surrounding the Aberdeen oil business there is a bunch of thugs who like to have an elaborate code name system based on birds. The Cage is run by the Eagle, and the ranks descend in various stages of fearsomeness through Kestrel and Hawk onwards, until we come face to face with... Sparrow.

Chris Machin is really way out of his league when he is scooped into the world of criminals who like finger-busting and quick knee movements into the groin of an opponent. All he wants is to have a quiet life teaching, but as luck would have it, he's caught between the Cage and the Bellazzo Boys. Or the Third Way.

Or Inspector Lodgedale, for that matter. This singularly homicidal police officer brings restless energy into the cast and plot of this book, which are well nigh overflowing with it already. We follow Sparrow's hapless drifting from one criminal event to another via pro wrestling and occasional moments of peace at the Cage.

What makes this fast and furious crime story different is the quality of writing. Bill Kirton delivers such eloquent and flowing prose that I found myself frequently reading passages again, since the sentences fall tingling onto the reader's mind. He is also the master of the understatement, as well as the unexpected. His effortless delivery of the nitty-gritty of the oil business is another source of wonder to me. In some books the frame of reference is created with clarity and ease, and this is one of them.

If you do it the way I did, you'll be reading this book fast at first, to see what can possibly happen next, but then you'll slow down to savour the depth of the story. And the plot will have you riveted and entertained all the way to the ingenious end.

The only negative side is, this is not a book you can read in bed in the night unless you're single. I was unable to keep myself from bursting out laughing so many times while reading this that I was a source of irritation.

Highly recommended to friends of crime with a sense of humour and a taste for the unexpected.]]> Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:20:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=10
The book features a set of lay people who decide to see for themselves, just how far they can get when they apply scientifically designed methods to trying to reach the spirit world.

There are natural mediums in the group, and others who have become interested in the spirit world; there's also a healthy dose of sceptisism in the group. They furnish a cellar for research (hence the name "Scole Hole") and go about designing tamper-proof systems for keeping film and other test objects safe.

They make contact with a group of advanced spirits, who deliver an unbelievable range of results: apports (objects transported into the locked room), images on film and video camera, and even a picture of a newspaper that can be verifiable found in the archives.

Now, I write speculative fiction; one of my very favorite topics is the activities of the spirits in this world, and the threshold between the two worlds.

If you don't go for that kind of stuff, I challenge you to read this book. It will offer you compelling evidence of life after death and continuous spiritual develoment.

If you already are interested in this, you will find many interesting examples and facets of this interaction between spirits and this world we can rap our knuckles on.

What really tantalizes me is how the spirit team comes across as a set of individuals, with different tempers, senses of humor, and goals they want to achieve with the research team. This to me as a writer of fiction is invaluable, as I feel myself working within a framework when I write stories of ghosts in medieval churches and so on.

Some of the images are blurry and resemble light leaks in a camera, but when you read about the setup the team used, you will see it is not a possibility. And then there are the perfectly formed, colorful, sharp images of poetry that span many frames in a roll of 35mm film. You need to see them to form your own opinion, but I recommend you have a look.

There's two more such books I must recommend at this point, for the same reasons, both by John G. Fuller: "The Airmen who would not Die", and "The Ghost of Flight 401". ]]> Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:53:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=11
I enjoy writing flash fiction whenever the idea hits me, however, only a few ideas are suitable for flashing - most need more words, like 1K or more. But when the real nugget comes out, it is very enjoyable to work it into 500 words.

My own piece in this book, "Think Positive" arose from a photo challenge on the site. There were a dozen different pieces written on an intense photo showing just two people, separated by a fence, engaged in conversation. Such is usually the origin of flash fiction - something that has an intensity that can be packed into this tight format.

I will not give stars to a book I contributed to, but I encourage you to get it and see just how much can be said in so few words.

This book is available at http://amzn.to/qS7mfo and all proceeds go to the Dutch charity War Child.]]> Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:13:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=12
I contacted him out of the blue in May, and we set a date for the Literary Evening straight away. He was intrigued by my book, and was interested to host an evening for me to tell people about it.

He said that the shop sometimes has 5 people at an event, and sometimes there's no space to move. My chosen date was not the best, as July is a month of holidays for Finns. I set up an event in Facebook and Ian added my info on his mailing list.

At the event we had about 15 people, half of whom I knew, and half were not my acquaintances. I proceeded to put up the PDF file I had prepared, and almost every slide of 25 led to questions from the crowd. You can see a link to the the slides on the front page of this site.

When the slides ran out, conversation went on still for some 20 minutes, so even if Ian did not have to forcefully eject us from the shop, we used the two hours allocated to us.

It was a very nice evening and the questions a pleasure to answer. I decided then and there to host another such evening as soon as Slivers (the short story collection) is out. I will probably introduce the book, but mostly I hope to concentrate on the craft of short story writing. It seems to me writing was the main interest to many of the guests, so it'll be even nicer to plan the evening around that next time.

I'll send you an invite in Facebook!]]> Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:28:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=13 Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:13:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=14
In this compilation I especially liked "Celestial", which is a story verging on speculative fiction. Pete brings to life the main character effortlessly and believably, and the piece leaves the reader with a sense of wonder.

Another favorite is "Joyful, Joyful", which rang so very true with me, due to my own experience after my father passed away. I marveled at the depth of Pete's perception and the frankness of his thoughts. In this piece his insights really shine, and one cannot read this short story without being moved.

"A Dirty Angel" shows Pete's flawless handling of sequencing, a thing which has always been is forte, especially in his book "Diary of a Small Fish". I am eagerly awaiting more in this line of short stories, action-packed but fun.

In all, I'd say any serious fan of short stories has to read these stories; it will leave him with a sense of contentment.

You can buy this book on Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/71893, and it is very well worth every cent.]]> Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:52:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=15
Her thesis has very interesting insights as to the voice and identity of authors who work in a language that was not their first one. Kyllönen says most all people are bilingual, some multilingual, and therefore there has always been such authors. She starts from the Middle Ages and makes a valid point of the fact that Latin was not the first language of any writer then, but most material appeared in Latin anyway.

In the modern age, especially the 20th century, bilingual authorship expanded and was diversified. Steven Kellman says that much of this corpus is actually literature by migrants who have been forced to move abroad for reasons beyond their control. This makes language choice one of necessity, not a voluntary one.

Kyllönen cites many examples of this type of writers, and the corpus is large too. Immigration also caused authors to select their topics so as to better handle the pressures of forced migration. A good example is the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe who lives in the US and writes in English, which is not his mother tongue, as only a small minority speak English in Nigeria.


Another point of Kellman's is the use of language to bolster the existence of a minority in a country. Many African writers do this nowadays to resist the power of English and to support the language and life of small minorities in African countries.

None of this applies to me, of course, as I am still in the country I was born in with no pressures applied to me to get me to write in English.

Jane Miller states in a paper written in 1983 that for people like Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov, writing in a foreign language opened new doors for their creativity. Miller claims that for many authors, writing in this manner has contributed to their work and enabled them to explore new depths of creativity. These authors can be said to have a hybrid author identity.

Then we have ambilingual writers, who have two distinct voices in two different languages. A good example is Rosario Ferrè, who states,

"A bilingual writer is really two different writers, has two very different voices, writes in two different styles, and, most important, looks at world through two different sets of glasses. This takes a splitting of the self that doesn't come easily and can be dangerous. (Ferrè, 2003, 138.)

Now, I strongly disagree with Ferrè.

I would much more like to think I have one voice, a sort of sub-structure, which is the story, and that I can add on it a presentation layer in either Finnish or English (attempting to write in German would probably get me shot at dawn for distorting the language). The story in itself is my voice, and I then use either Finnish or English to give it the presentation I hope to convey.

Kyllönen interviewed me through email. She is of the opinion that my English author identity is built on being accepted as an English-language writer, and asks now in the thesis, whether I would have such an identity if I were not accepted. She actually says that author identity is built on the continuous acceptance of readers.

What affects both me and the other Finnish author who's been published in English, Hannu Rajaniemi, is the fact that there's a host of practical reasons for selecting English as the language. These include the probability of publication, the range of topics, and the vocabulary for the chosen surroundings in the story. Sure, I'd like to use the very concise Finnish terms and idioms for some events, such as a specific type of snowfall, but that's just the way it is.

And then there's the question of language quality. I'll finish with Kamala Das's poem "An Introduction" in which the issue is very nicely put to rest:

(--)The language I speak/
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses/
All mine, mine alone. It is half English half/
Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest/
It is as human as I am human, don’t/
You see? (--)(Das, 2003, 5)

Taking part in this thesis was most interesting. I had never properly thought of this issue before, but now I have more of an idea of myself as an author with an English identity.
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