The panel looks behind ‘kaamos’, Koskenkorva, the films of Kaurismäki, the novels of Paasilinna and tango. In other words, it will talk about how Finnish identity has formed and developed. What is the inner light of the Finnish people, what kind of shadows haunt it, what kind of stereotypes wander around in and around the Finnish soul? The panel includes writer and journalist Venla Hiidensalo (1975), who has explored contemporary public space (Mediahuora) as well as how historical tensions are transferred to the present day (Karhunpesä); the Swedish-Finnish novelist Kjell Westö (1961) whose novel about the Finnish civil war and its aftermath, Där vi en gång gått, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize; writer and screenwriter Riikka Pelo (1972), whose second novel Jokapäiväinen elämämme about the exile of the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva won the Finlandia Prize in 2013. The conversation is moderated by Swedish-Finnish author Philip Teir (1980) whose debut, the family novel Vinterkrieg about the complexities of marriage was published in 2013. The event is organised in co-operation with the literary festival Helsinki Lit.
