Purge (Puhdistus), an older novel by Finnish-Estonian writer Sofi Oksanen, is a real tour de force. It's hard not to use cliches to describe a book that powerful. She pulls few punches, and there are tons of little details planted here and there that layer the ironies and macabre humor thick enough to keep the horrible stories of women's lives in times of war and under totalitarian dictatorships moving fiercely forward.
And backward. Time jumps and skips in this novel, a structure which heightens the suspense and emotional impact. Lola Roger's translation from the Finnish to English is excellent- she is batting 1.00 by my reading of 4 translations so far...
As Oksanen's website notes:
Narrated through a polyphonic choir of individual voices, Purge tells the suspenseful and dramatic story of Aliide Truu, an old Estonian woman whose hands are soiled with the crimes she committed during the Soviet era, and Zara, a young trafficking victim who in the present has managed to escape and has come to seek shelter at Aliide’s countryside home.
Also:
Purge became a runaway success, and Sofi Oksanen’s major breakthrough: No. 1 bestseller in Finland with sales exceeding 200 000 copies, Puhdistus has won its author numerous literary prizes, including Finland’s premier literary award, The Finlandia Award, as well as Nordic Council Literary Prize, the biggest literary prize in Nordic Countries. Purge has also won the 2010 FNAC prize in France. It was selected from 300 works published in France. This is the first time the award has gone to a foreign author.
Well deserved awards. This book really blew me away. Another cliche, but true. I'm on to her recent release, after reading Kameron Hurley's new series opener and Arto Paasilenna's The Howling Miller, because due at library. Still working on Terms of Service, during the commute. It's dense, in a good way. Information rich.
The range of different covers says it all. As a review said of the American cover, where are the maggots to tip off the reader that this is not a pastorale?
Interesting talk by Oksanen. And interview.
