Book Description

One morning in 2002, on an island off the coast of Finland, the narrator Pirkko Saisio tells her editor she’s accidentally deleted her latest manuscript, a book called The Red Book of Farewells. Whatever that book was is gone, but in its place is this story of a life: her life. And the lives of those around her—family members, student radicals, actors, and lesbian lovers in underground bars. It’s a story of leftist in-fighting, broken relationships, and finding new paths. Pirkko Saisio’s brilliant autobiographical novel, in Mia Spangenberg’s tender translation, is a contemporary classic of lesbian desire and politics. Composed as a series of farewells—to her mother, girlfriends she thought she’d spend her life with, and finally her daughter—the novel guides readers through Finland in the late-twentieth century. It’s a world where art and communist politics are hopelessly intertwined; queer love is an illegal force of creation and revolt; and a heart-to-heart conversation with the activist playwright Bertolt Brecht is a mere dream away. Playful and mysterious, The Red Book of Farewells is a work that stoically embraces the revolutionary potential of moving on.