Most of the pieces are semi-autobiographical and portray real people and events from Jansson’s life. The first two parts of the collection are made up of stories told from the perspective of a child, while the third part takes an enormous leap into old age. Unlike The Summer Book, not all the stories are confined to one season here, winter takes on the more symbolic meaning of age.

Together, the stories collected in A Winter Book form a moving, but wholly unsentimental meditation on aging and youth. I love lonely islands and I love flowers and snow. How many lonely islands are there in Finland? Tamiko’s letters reveal-we are not privy to Jansson’s side of the exchange-a great intimacy and understanding that defies cultural difference, age, and a vast geographic divide. Tokyo resident Tamiko first writes to Jansson hoping to learn how to write stories, and a friendship soon buds. This spare, poignant story is based on the actual letters exchanged by an elderly Jansson and a young Japanese fan. In addition to previously published stories and a selection of black and white photography, this latest compilation includes the piece “Correspondence,” appearing for the first time in English translation. But the popular reception of her novel The Summer Book (originally published in 1972 and reprinted in English in 2003) sparked a renewed interest in Jansson’s adult prose. Jansson, probably Finland’s best-known queer figure, is so overwhelmingly famous for authoring the Moomintroll series, that her contributions as a visual artist and writer of adult fiction have frequently gone unmentioned. Photograph courtesy of A House Called NutĪ Winter Book(2006) is the first collection of Tove Jansson’s short fiction for adults to appear in English translation in almost forty years. Thank goodness for books, piles and piles of books.įinland. No matter how many winter sports a person picks up, I’d discovered, the extremity of the Finnish winter means spending a lot of time indoors. With one bitterly cold winter under my belt, I was now less worried about basic survival and more concerned with keeping cabin fever at bay during the long, dark months ahead. It was during my second year in Finland that my friend surprised me with a copy of 0954899520::text:::: A Winter Book. If you’re tired of hearing about summer, how does a good dose of Finnish winter sound?

A winter book by tove jansson