The Human Part

Kari Hotakainen was born in 1957 in Pori, Finland. His breakthrough came in 1997 when he was nominated for the Finlandia Prize, which he later won in 2002. Hotakainen has also written children's plays, radio dramas, newspaper columns and television scripts. Owen F. Witesman is a translator from Finnish and Estonian.

An elderly woman agrees to sell her life story to an author with writer's block she meets at a book fair. She needs to talk - her husband has not spoken since a family tragedy some months ago, and seven thousand euros is a lot of money. She claims that her grown-up children are doing well, but the writer imagines less salubrious lives for them, as the downturn of Finland's economic boom begins to bite. Perhaps he's on to something. The Human Part lays bare the absurdities of modern society in the most vicious and precise manner imaginable. But it is also a wise novel of family life, rejoicing in the little white lies we tell one another and the way we pull together in times of tragedy.