The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna
Translated by Herbert Lomas
It's spring in Finland and Kaarlo Vatanen, a jaded journalist approaching middle age, is having a row with his photographer and they drive to a job. Distracted, his colleague hits a hare in the road.
Vatanen leaps from the car, hunts for and finds the animal and makes a splint for its injured leg. But as he does this, the irritated photographer drives off.
Suddenly, with the choice made for him, Vatanen realises that he doesn't want to return to his old life. With the hare as his companion, he sets off an odyssey, up and down the country, more and more eschewing 'civilisation' and preferring the wilderness.
This slender volume, one of the 'Unesco collection of representative works', is, according to the cover, a picaresque tale with an "ecological" theme. It's the former, certainly, but it's difficult to see the green agenda here.
What it is about is the dissatisfaction of modern 'civilised' life: the artificiality and pointlessness. And there is a sense that it's all a game – even the politicians don't take their war games seriously and are more interested in entertainment.
But it's more of a hippyish message than an obviously green one.
However, there is a bite. Rebelling against the modern world cannot be allowed, as Vatanen discovers when his adventures turn out to be crimes and the government imprisons him and the hare. Given that, the denouement brought tears of delight to my eyes.
The prose is simple. The characters are nicely drawn – including the hare, which, with judicious anthropomorphosis, itself becomes a rounded and picaresque character.
It's a charming, dryly funny novel, and it's subtle digs at the media, politicians and the vacuousness of much of modern life are as pungent today as ever.
Translated by Herbert Lomas
It's spring in Finland and Kaarlo Vatanen, a jaded journalist approaching middle age, is having a row with his photographer and they drive to a job. Distracted, his colleague hits a hare in the road.
Vatanen leaps from the car, hunts for and finds the animal and makes a splint for its injured leg. But as he does this, the irritated photographer drives off.
Suddenly, with the choice made for him, Vatanen realises that he doesn't want to return to his old life. With the hare as his companion, he sets off an odyssey, up and down the country, more and more eschewing 'civilisation' and preferring the wilderness.
This slender volume, one of the 'Unesco collection of representative works', is, according to the cover, a picaresque tale with an "ecological" theme. It's the former, certainly, but it's difficult to see the green agenda here.
What it is about is the dissatisfaction of modern 'civilised' life: the artificiality and pointlessness. And there is a sense that it's all a game – even the politicians don't take their war games seriously and are more interested in entertainment.
But it's more of a hippyish message than an obviously green one.
However, there is a bite. Rebelling against the modern world cannot be allowed, as Vatanen discovers when his adventures turn out to be crimes and the government imprisons him and the hare. Given that, the denouement brought tears of delight to my eyes.
The prose is simple. The characters are nicely drawn – including the hare, which, with judicious anthropomorphosis, itself becomes a rounded and picaresque character.
It's a charming, dryly funny novel, and it's subtle digs at the media, politicians and the vacuousness of much of modern life are as pungent today as ever.
