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The Year of the Hare

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
192 Seiten
Englisch
Pushkin Presserschienen am30.11.2023
A delightfully witty and mordant modern classic from Finland: the story of a journalist who befriends an injured hare and embarks into the Finnish wilderness __________ 'No wonder the French have made this book into a cult. Finnish wit as sharp as the Arctic weather' Mail on Sunday 'A change-your-life novel' New York Magazine 'Sums up the Finnish culture and people' Guardian __________ Kaarlo Vatanen is fed up with his life. He's sick of his job, his wife, his urban lifestyle in Helsinki. But all this changes one warm summer's evening, when he encounters an injured hare on a deserted country road. On an impulse he can't fully explain, Vatanen abruptly abandons his car, his home, his wife and his job to chase the hare into the forest. A year of comic misadventures ensues, where Vatanen and his unlikely companion battle through forest fires, pagan sacrifices, military war games and encounters with murderous bears, kept afloat by the help and understanding of other sympathetic free spirits. A much-loved classic in Finland, The Year of the Hare is a freewheeling adventure through the Finnish countryside, and a witty portrayal of one man's long detour from conventional living.

Aarto Paasilinna was born in Kittila, Finland in 1942. After a successful but unsatisfying career as a journalist, he quit his job and sold his boat to write The Year of the Hare, which became an international bestseller. One of Finland's most well-known writers, his works have been translated into 27 languages and have sold over seven million copies worldwide.mehr
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TaschenbuchKartoniert, Paperback
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EUR17,00
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Produkt

KlappentextA delightfully witty and mordant modern classic from Finland: the story of a journalist who befriends an injured hare and embarks into the Finnish wilderness __________ 'No wonder the French have made this book into a cult. Finnish wit as sharp as the Arctic weather' Mail on Sunday 'A change-your-life novel' New York Magazine 'Sums up the Finnish culture and people' Guardian __________ Kaarlo Vatanen is fed up with his life. He's sick of his job, his wife, his urban lifestyle in Helsinki. But all this changes one warm summer's evening, when he encounters an injured hare on a deserted country road. On an impulse he can't fully explain, Vatanen abruptly abandons his car, his home, his wife and his job to chase the hare into the forest. A year of comic misadventures ensues, where Vatanen and his unlikely companion battle through forest fires, pagan sacrifices, military war games and encounters with murderous bears, kept afloat by the help and understanding of other sympathetic free spirits. A much-loved classic in Finland, The Year of the Hare is a freewheeling adventure through the Finnish countryside, and a witty portrayal of one man's long detour from conventional living.

Aarto Paasilinna was born in Kittila, Finland in 1942. After a successful but unsatisfying career as a journalist, he quit his job and sold his boat to write The Year of the Hare, which became an international bestseller. One of Finland's most well-known writers, his works have been translated into 27 languages and have sold over seven million copies worldwide.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781805330363
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2023
Erscheinungsdatum30.11.2023
Seiten192 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse819 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.13128862
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe




1
The Hare


Two harassed men were driving down a lane. The setting sun was paining their eyes through the dusty windscreen. It was midsummer, but the landscape on this sandy by-road was slipping past their weary eyes unnoticed; the beauty of the Finnish evening was lost on them both.

They were a journalist and a photographer, out on an assignment: two dissatisfied, cynical men, getting on for middle age. The hopes of their youth had not been realized, far from it. They were husbands, deceiving and deceived; stomach ulcers were on the way for both of them; and many other worries filled their days.

They d just been wrangling. Should they drive back to Helsinki or spend the night in Heinola? Now they weren t speaking.

They drove through the lovely summer evening hunched, self-absorbed as two mindless crustaceans, not even noticing how wretched their cantankerousness was. It was a stubborn, wearying drag of a journey.

On the crest of a hillock, an immature hare was trying its leaps in the middle of the road. Tipsy with summer, it perched on its hind legs, framed by the red sun.

The photographer, who was driving, saw the little creature, but his dull brain reacted too slowly: a dusty city shoe slammed hard on the brake, too late. The shocked animal leaped up in front of the car, there was a muffled thump as it hit the corner of the windscreen, and it hurtled off into the forest.

God! That was a hare, the journalist said.

Bloody animal - good thing it didn t bust the windscreen. The photographer pulled up and backed to the spot. The journalist got out and ran into the forest.

Well, can you see anything? the photographer called, listlessly. He had wound down the window, but the engine was still running.

What? shouted the journalist.

The photographer lit a cigarette and drew on it, with eyes closed. He revived when the cigarette burned his fingers.

Come on out! I can t hang about here for ever because of some stupid hare!

The journalist went distractedly through the thinly treed forest, came to a small allotment, hopped a ditch and looked hard at a patch of dark-green grass. He could see the leveret there in the grass.

Its left hind leg was broken. The cracked shin hung pitifully, too painful for the animal to run, though it saw a human being approaching.

The journalist picked the leveret up and held it in his arms. It was terrified. He snapped off a piece of twig and splinted its hind leg with strips torn from his handkerchief. The hare nestled its head between its little forepaws, ears trembling with the thumping of its heartbeat.

Back on the road there was an irritable revving, two tetchy blasts on the horn, and a shout: Come on out! We ll never make Helsinki if you hang around in this wilderness! Out of there, sharp, or you ll find your own way back!

There was no reply. The journalist was nursing the little animal in his arms. Apparently, it was hurt only in the leg. It was gradually calming down.

The photographer got out. He looked furiously into the forest but could see nothing of his companion. He swore, lit a cigarette and stamped back on to the road. Still no sound from the forest: he stubbed his cigarette out on the road and yelled: Stay there, then! Goodbye, nutcase!

He listened for another moment but, getting no reply, stormed into the car, revved up, put the clutch in and shot off. Gravel spat under the wheels. In a moment the car was out of sight.

The journalist sat on the edge of the ditch, holding the hare in his lap: he resembled an old woman with her knitting on her knees and lost in thought. The sound of the motor-car engine faded away. The sun set.

The journalist put the hare down on the grass patch. For a moment he was afraid the leveret would try to escape; but it huddled in the grass, and when he picked it up again, it showed no sign of fear at all.

So here we are, he said to the hare. Left.

That was the situation: he was sitting alone in the forest, in his jacket, on a summer evening. He d been well and truly abandoned.

What does one usually do in such a situation? Perhaps he should have responded to the photographer s shouts, he thought. Now maybe he ought to find his way back to the road, wait for the next car, hitch a lift, and think about getting to Heinola, or Helsinki, under his own steam.

The idea was very unalluring.

The journalist looked in his wallet. There were a few banknotes, his press-card, his health-insurance card, a photograph of his wife, a few coins, a couple of condoms, a bunch of keys, an old May Day celebration badge. And also some pens, a notepad, a ring. The management had printed on the pad Kaarlo Vatanen, journalist. His health-insurance card indicated that Kaarlo Vatanen was born in 1942.

Vatanen got to his feet, gazed at the sunset s last redness through the forest trees, nodded to the hare. He looked towards the road but made no move that way. He picked the hare up off the grass, put it tenderly in the side-pocket of his jacket, and left the allotment for the darkening forest.

The photographer drove to Heinola, raging. There he filled up the tank and decided to book into the hotel the journalist had suggested.

He took a double room, threw off his dusty clothes and had a shower. Refreshed, he went down to the hotel restaurant. Vatanen would certainly appear there soon, he considered. Then they could talk the whole thing through, sort it out. He consumed several bottles of beer and, after a meal, moved on to stronger drinks.

But there was still no sign of the journalist.

Late into the night he was still sitting in the hotel bar. He contemplated the black surface of the bar counter in a mood of angry regret. As the evening had gone by he had been mulling over what had happened. It had dawned on him that abandoning his companion in the forest, in an almost deserted neighbourhood, had been an error. Supposing the journalist had broken his leg in the forest? Might he have got lost? Or stuck in a bog? Otherwise, surely, he d have found his way back to Heinola by now, even on foot?

The photographer thought he d better ring the journalist s wife in Helsinki.

She muttered sleepily that there d been no sign of Vatanen and, when she realized the caller was drunk, banged the receiver down. When the photographer tried the same number again, there was no reply. Clearly, Vatanen s wife had unplugged the telephone.

In the early hours, the photographer called for a taxi. He d decided to go back to the site and see if Vatanen was still there. The taxi-driver asked his drunken client where it was he wished to go.

Just drive along this road, nowhere in particular. I ll tell you where to stop.

The driver glanced back. They were driving out of town through the night forest and not going anywhere in particular apparently. Furtively, he transferred a pistol from the glove compartment onto the seat between his legs. Uneasily, he studied the client.

At the top of a rise, the client said: Stop here.

The driver eased the pistol into his hand. The drunk, however, got out of the car pacifically, and began shouting at the forest: Vatanen! Vatanen!

The night forest didn t return even an echo.

Vatanen! Hey, Vatanen! Are you there?

He took off his shoes, rolled his trousers up to his knees, and set off into the forest, barefoot. Soon he d vanished in the darkness. He could be heard yelling for Vatanen among the trees.

You get them all! the driver thought.

After about half an hour s shindy in the dark forest, the client returned to the road. Asking for a rag, he wiped his muddy shanks and put his shoes on his bare feet; the socks seemed to be in his jacket pocket. They drove back to Heinola.

You ve lost some Vatanen, have you?

Right. Left him there on the hill, in the evening. Not a whiff of him there now.

Didn t see anything myself, either, the driver said sympathetically.

Next morning, the photographer woke up in the hotel at about eleven. A nasty hangover was splitting his head, and he felt sick. He remembered Vatanen s disappearance. Must get on to Vatanen s wife at her job⦠he thought.

He went off after a hare, he told her. On this hill. Then never came back. Of course I kept shouting, but not a squeak from him. So I left him there. Probably he wanted to stay there.

To this, the wife said: Was he drunk?

No.

So where is he, then? The man can t just disappear like that.

He did just disappear like that. Not turned up there yet, I suppose?

No, definitely not. God, that man ll drive me round the bend. Let him sort this out on his own. The thing is, he s...

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Autor

Aarto Paasilinna was born in Kittila, Finland in 1942. After a successful but unsatisfying career as a journalist, he quit his job and sold his boat to write The Year of the Hare, which became an international bestseller. One of Finland's most well-known writers, his works have been translated into 27 languages and have sold over seven million copies worldwide.
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