Cassie McCullagh

The novel that you've read for us today has been translated from Finnish and your parents came to Australia from Finland.

Do you read Finnish yourself?

house style for Finland?

Is there a kind of trait that is identifiable or is it like Australia, just everyone doing everything?

Oh, my Lord.

Yes, the books that keep coming back to you.

You're listening to The Bookshelf on air on RN, or if you're with us via the ABC Listen app or the podcast, then you already know this because you've chosen to do so.

And for that, we thank you very much.

I'm Cassie McCullough.

Yeah, go on, do it.

Now, our guests today are the classics scholar Tamara Neal and poet, novelist and academic Maria Tacklelander.

Well, I think it might be what Maria called Finnish weird.

It's Laura Lindstedt's book, Oneron, which won the Finlandia Prize, which is, everybody knows, of course, Finland's biggest literary award.

It's open to novels written in either Swedish or Finnish, but you have to be a Finnish citizen to win it.

Now, Maria, Kate, you've both read this book, but it's set in the afterlife.

Maria, how does that work?

What do you mean?

Wow.

So it's a reclamation rather than a further insult.

So she uses her emaciated body as a kind of sideshow curiosity.