Not Before Sundown - Softcover

Sinisalo, Johanna

3.52

5,389 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0720613507 ISBN 13: 9780720613506

Publisher: Peter Owen, 2010

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Translated from the Finnish by Herbert Lomas, this is an international fantasy best-seller (published in America as Troll) and winner of the Finlandia Prize. Mikael, a young gay photographer, finds in the courtyard of his apartment block a small, man-like creature. It is a young troll, known from Scandinavian mythology as a demonic wild beast, a hybrid like the werewolf. Supposedly extinct, today it is regarded as a hairy, cuddly toy by Nordic children. Mikael gives the troll a name, Pessi, and takes him home and hides him. The first thing Mikael does is research everything he can about trolls from the internet, from folklore, nature journals and newspaper cuttings. What Mikael does not discover is that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for an ultra-hip brand of jeans, Mikael finds himself fast-tracked into a dangerous liaison with Martes, the sexually ambivalent art director of the advertising agency concerned, while a couple of his friends in turn fall in love with him because he carries the troll's scent. What Mikael fails above all to learn, with tragic consequences, is that Pessi the troll is the interpreter of man's darkest, most forbidden impulses.

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Review:

A sharp, resonant, prickly book that exists on the slipstream of SF, fantasy, horror and gay fiction. --Neil Gaiman

A punk version of The Hobbit. --USA Today

Chillingly seductive.' --Independent, Best Reads of 2003

From the Author:

I wanted to write a book that would deal with themes bigger than life—the relationship between man and nature; the problems of different kinds of otherness; how our biological ancestry as hierarchical pack animals still affects us. But I also wanted it to work as a thrilling and emotionally charged story, something the reader could thoroughly enjoy.

Writing it, finally, was like a deep dive into dark unknown waters. Finishing it was like swimming up, breaking the surface, first breathing deeply and then noticing the way I could see that the world has, in a small but definite way, changed during the dive.

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