The Beggar & the Hare

From a hugely popular, award-winning Finnish author, this entertaining, profound, and satirical tale follows a Romanian beggar living on the streets of Helsinki.

Vatanescu, a young Romanian construction worker, desires two things: a future for himself and a pair of football boots for his son. So off he goes to a cold, dark country to beg.

Despite reading about Finland in the novels of Arto Paasilinna, Vatanescu has no idea what he is in for, and soon he is living on the streets of Helsinki, throwing feasts from the contents of a dumpster with his fellow beggars. Little does he realize, however, that his employer is about to ruin his bacchanal, and much, much more…

As Vatanescu flees from international crime organizations as well as the Finnish police, he finds an unlikely companion: a hare who has been sentenced to death for living within Helsinki’s city limits. Together, Vatanescu and his new fellow fugitive set on a journey from Lapland to the National Idea Park construction site, to the upper echelons of Finnish politics.

Known for his satirical humor and picaresque style, Tuomas Kyro offers an unusual tale in the vein of Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man and Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. At once humorous and deeply moving, The Beggar and the Hare is a modern tour de force.