Winner of the Finlandia Prize
Winner of the Aleksis Kivi Prize
“A beautifully rendered portrait of a strikingly queer life—Saisio troubles any distinction we might try to draw between the personal and the political, the remembered and the invented.” —Morgan Thomas, author of Manywhere

“Pirkko Saisio might be the best Finnish author alive. She is wise, profound, funny, erudite, an old and precise person, and of course a divine storyteller and a master of dialogue. On top of all that, she uses the Finnish language masterfully.” —Aamulehti (Finland)

“Pirkko Saisio has for a long time been a genre of her own, an author with a recognizable style, but in her late works she has crossed borders and combined genres with ever more courage.” —Helsingin Sanomat

“The Red Book of Farewells is fundamentally about discovering artistic ambition and the origin of inspiration and, undoubtedly, about love, or loves. The red hue in the work is, after all, both the color of love and politics. Saisio’s style and self-irony are unfailing and keep me coming back to the book over and over again.” —Kirjavinkit (Finland)

“Saisio has had a major effect on the cultural atmosphere we live in.” —Aleksis Kivi Prize jury

“Self-awareness—and introspection, too, for that matter, are the means by which Saisio writes literature. The stronger the writer’s self comes across in the lines, the more rocky and wide open the text becomes. The illusion of control crumbles and Saisio’s impressive grasp of drama builds the dialogue, whose few words, yet precise rhythms, give rise to pocket-sized tragedies and comedies.”—Taina Ratia, Turun (Finland)

“Judging by this book, Pirkko Saisio deserves the praise, and one hopes for more translations of her work.…It is a satirical account on life in the working-class theatre school, a bittersweet love story, a political coming-of-age story in an era when homosexuality was still illegal in Finland, and a glimpse of life as a single mother—all of this is narrated in a chronological zigzag through the 70s. 80s, and in the 2000s. when the narrator is unsure whether to write ‘she’ or ‘I.’ Saisio is a kindred spirit to Jonas Gardell.” —Nina Lekander, Expressen (Sweden)

“A beautiful song about survival. Despite the sufferings, Finnish Pirkko Saisio dissects the hidden codes of relationships. Like no other, she manages to capture the waiting at the bar, when the person one is waiting for never shows up.” —Heidi von Born, Svenska Dagbladet

“Sleek, virtuosic.” —Maija Alftan, Helsingin (Finland)