Selja Ahava’s novel is a stunning narrative that explores the unexpected and inexplicable nature of reality. A triptych of voices weave together an array of human attempts to force life into logical chains of events. On a sunny summer day, a block of ice falls from the sky and kills a woman on her home veranda. Her story is brutally cut short, and her eight-year-old daughter Saara is left motherless. After the tragedy, Saara and her father move in with their lottery-winning Auntie. Not long after, Auntie wins the jackpot for a second time and falls into a deep three-week sleep. When she wakes up, she is struck by questions about her good fortune and what the future holds. She decides to contact a Scottish fisherman who has been hit four times by lightning and asks for his advice. Their correspondence starts an archive of chance and coincidence. After four years, Saara and her father move back to their old house with the father’s pregnant new partner. The house, where renovations never got completed, comes back to life and carries its own seeds of secrets. The novel gracefully combines the ordinary with the radically absurd, beauty with violence, fairy tales with strange facts about objects falling from the sky. Ahava tells us about pain and loss in flowing prose with a voice that is both powerful and effortless.
This project has been funded with support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission.
Selja Ahava graduated with a degree in scriptwriting from the Theatre Academy of Helsinki in 2001. She has written film scripts, a TV series and a radio play. She has also written works that combine text, space and performance. Selja received a grant from the Laila Hirvisaari Foundation for her debut novel, The Day the Whale Swam Through London (orig. Eksyneen muistikirja). The purpose of this annual award is to support accomplished Finnish authors who are still at the start of their careers to write high quality, poignant books. Her second novel Things That Fall from the Sky (original title: Taivaalta tippuvat asiat) received the European Union Prize for Literature and was nominated for the prestigious Finlandia literary prize.
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