The Year of the Hare (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works)

The Year of the Hare introduces to British readers one of the most successful contemporary Finnish writers. As in Finland, the novel was a runaway best-seller in France, where it became a cult book.
A journalist and a photographer set out on an assignment on a lovely sunny evening. As they drive through the country they hit a young hare. Vatanen, the journalist, leaves the car and goes in search of the injured creature. This event is the catalyst for a series of bizarre adventures, which take Vatanen beyond the Arctic Circle and into Soviet Russia.
Vatanen, middle-aged, dissatisfied, a 'deceived and deceiving' husband in a childless marriage, sells his yacht for ready cash and escapes his confining life in Helsinke. Accompanied by his friend the hare, he lives on his wits and by doing various manual jobs in the wild, thus gaining a total sense of the freedom he has always craved. His picaresque travels lead eventually to his arrest and imprisonment. But that is not quite the end of the story, to which his encounter with the beguiling Leila brings a final happy twist.

"Escapism at its best . . . Just pure fun-a fantasy of what might happen if one day you just said, 'Oh, the hell with it.' "
-Lynn Neary, NPR.org
"Amazing . . . It can be read over a long winter afternoon and will leave you feeling a little warmer inside."
-"San Francisco Book Review"
"[A] wonderful book . . . The perfect escape literature . . . [It] will have you laughing and gasping by turns. . . . Of the many lines in this book that I cherished, the last is one of the most delicious: 'Vatanen is a man to be reckoned with.' So is this book."
-Lonely Planet
"Compelling . . . You might just find yourself wishing for a hare to enter your life in the near future."
-"Seattle Post-Intelligencer"
"[A] joy . . . The glory of the outdoors is celebrated here, through each season, and we can nearly smell the early clover and meadow vetchling of the hare's diet. . . . Vatanen is who we want to be [and] who we yearn to be brave enough to bec

"This is escapism at its best. . . . Really, it''s just pure fun, like an adult fairy tale-a fantasy of what might happen if one day you just said, ''Oh, the hell with it.'' "
-Lynn Neary, NPR.org
"[A] wonderful book . . . If you are too timid to actually cut all the ties to your ''civilized'' life, but still have a yearning to get away from clocks and calendars, Arto Paasilinna''s "The Year of the Hare" provides the perfect escape literature. . . . The humor in this book just sneaks up on you. . . . [It] will have you laughing and gasping by turns. . . . The writing is as spare and clean as the lines of Scandinavian design. . . . Of the many lines in this book that I cherished, the last is one of the most delicious: ''Vatanen is a man to be reckoned with.'' So is this book."
-Lonely Planet
"A fable of the joys of freedom . . . The hare proves to be a delightful, undemanding, and loyal companion, who can laugh, listen, and feel embarrassment."
-"The Boston Globe"
"Paasilinna''s style is all Finn-a sly sense of humor, a simplicity, a moral compass that points firmly north and out of doors, away from cities. . . . Readers root for Vatanen as he leaps off the mad merry-go-round."
-"Los Angeles Times"
"Compelling . . . You might just find yourself wishing for a hare to enter your life in the near future."
-"Seattle Post-Intelligencer"
"Beguiling, gently ironic . . . [an] ode to spontaneity and serendipity."
-"National Geographic Traveler"
"[A] joy . . . The glory of the outdoors is celebrated here, through each season, and we can nearly smell the early clover and meadow vetchling of the hare''s diet. . . . Vatanen is who we want to be [and] who we yearn to be brave enough to become, as soon as we stop waiting for the timing to be right."
-"BookPage"
"Hilarious . . . With its fiercely independent protagonist and its depiction of Finland''s wild northland, this comic novel will offer reade

"This is escapism at its best. . . . Really, it's just pure fun, like an adult fairy tale-a fantasy of what might happen if one day you just said, 'Oh, the hell with it.' "
-Lynn Neary, NPR.org

"[A] wonderful book . . . If you are too timid to actually cut all the ties to your 'civilized' life, but still have a yearning to get away from clocks and calendars, Arto Paasilinna's The Year of the Hare provides the perfect escape literature. . . . The humor in this book just sneaks up on you. . . . [It] will have you laughing and gasping by turns. . . . The writing is as spare and clean as the lines of Scandinavian design. . . . Of the many lines in this book that I cherished, the last is one of the most delicious: 'Vatanen is a man to be reckoned with.' So is this book."
-Lonely Planet

"A fable of the joys of freedom . . . The hare proves to be a delightful, undemanding, and loyal companion, who can laugh, listen, and feel embarrassment."
-The Boston Globe

"Paasilinna's style is all Finn-a sly sense of humor, a simplicity, a moral compass that points firmly north and out of doors, away from cities. . . . Readers root for Vatanen as he leaps off the mad merry-go-round."
-Los Angeles Times

"Compelling . . . You might just find yourself wishing for a hare to enter your life in the near future."
-Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Beguiling, gently ironic . . . [an] ode to spontaneity and serendipity."
-National Geographic Traveler

"[A] joy . . . The glory of the outdoors is celebrated here, through each season, and we can nearly smell the early clover and meadow vetchling of the hare's diet. . . . Vatanen is who we want to be [and] who we yearn to be brave enough to become, as soon as we stop waiting for the timing to be right."
-BookPage

"Hilarious . . . With its fiercely independent protagonist and its depiction of Finland's wild northland, this comic novel will offer readers a rare opportunity to experience Finland and read one of that country's most popular authors."
-Library Journal

"The Year of the Hare offers enjoyable yarns: fun adventures, agreeably related. . . . It's so good-natured and has so much varied action-and that animal-appeal-that it makes for a consistently enjoyable read."
-The Complete Review

"Exhilarating . . . The sheer literary delight of Arto Paasilinna's comic novels is one of the best-kept secrets in Finland. . . . You'll want to laugh out loud at all the good parts, and savor every lean, simple, honest sentence."
-Shelf Awareness

"The Year of the Hare is only the most Finnish, and perhaps most antically Zen-ish, of a shelf-load of books that tell us to find and live by our own ideas of contentment."
-The Wall Street Journal

"An exemplary comic novel, full of amiable if binding warnings about the septic follies of civilization-to be read with rising anxiety and delight."
-Thomas McGuane

"Step out of the domestic gulag and into The Year of the Hare, a novel that depicts the confident freedom of the journeyman. I loved it."
-Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft

"I love The Year of the Hare. . . . Which of us wouldn't secretly want to live in a novel as fresh and as full of events as this one?"
-Pico Iyer, from the Foreword

"Paasilinna has been amusing Finns for thirty years and readers in twenty-five languages."
-The New York Times