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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > The Last of the Vostyachs

The Last of the Vostyachs

The author of New Finnish Grammar returns with another brilliant offering.

As a child, Ivan and his father worked as forced labourers in a mine in Siberia, the father having committed some minor offence against the regime. He is then murdered in front of his young son, after which Ivan – who is a Vostyak, an imaginary ethnic group of whose language he is the last remaining speaker – is struck dumb by having witnessed his father’s murder. Some twenty years later the guards desert their posts and Ivan walks off free, together with the other inmates. Guided by some mysterious power, he returns to the region he originally came from…

An exploration of language identity, a crime thriller in a Finnish setting, and a surprisingly funny depiction of man and language’s journey.

The Last of the Vostyachs won two literary prizes in Italy in 2002: the Premio Campiello and Premio Stresa, and was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the UK.

‘A genius Helsinki mystery with a touch of The Killing‘
Guardian

Author

A Yi

A Yi

Books

A Perfect Crime

A Yi is a Chinese author born in 1976. After spending five years as a police officer, he quit to become the editor-in-chief of the bi-monthly literary magazine Chutzpah. He has written two collections of short stories, Grey Stories and The Bird Saw Me, some of which have been published in Granta and the Guardian. He was nominated for the People’s Literature Short Stories prestigious award for Top Twenty Literary Giants of the Future in 2010. A Perfect Crime was published in China in 2011. He lives in Beijing.

Diego Marani

Diego Marani

Books

The Last of the Vostyachs

Diego Marani was born in Ferrara, Italy in 1959. Marani is a novelist, translator, essayist and newspaper columnist. In 1996 he invented Europanto, a mock international auxiliary language. Marani has published different articles, short stories and video clips in Europanto.  His most famous novel New Finnish Grammar has been translated into several languages and won the Grinzane Cavour Literary prize. His last book La Bicicleta Incantata has been made into a film. Marani now works as a Policy Officer for the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Union.

Translator

Judith Landry

Judith Landry

Books

The Last of the Vostyachs

The Mussolini Canal

Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter

Judith Landry was educated at Somerville College, Oxford where she obtained a first class honours degree in French and Italian. Her translated titles include The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga, The Devil in Love by Jacques Cazotte,The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague by Sylvie Germain and Smarra & Trilby by Charles Nodier.  She combines a career as a translator of works of fiction, art and architecture with part-time teaching.

Published by

Dedalus Books, 2012
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The author of New Finnish Grammar returns with another brilliant offering.

As a child, Ivan and his father worked as forced labourers in a mine in Siberia, the father having committed some minor offence against the regime. He is then murdered in front of his young son, after which Ivan – who is a Vostyak, an imaginary ethnic group of whose language he is the last remaining speaker – is struck dumb by having witnessed his father’s murder. Some twenty years later the guards desert their posts and Ivan walks off free, together with the other inmates. Guided by some mysterious power, he returns to the region he originally came from…

An exploration of language identity, a crime thriller in a Finnish setting, and a surprisingly funny depiction of man and language’s journey.

The Last of the Vostyachs won two literary prizes in Italy in 2002: the Premio Campiello and Premio Stresa, and was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the UK.

‘A genius Helsinki mystery with a touch of The Killing‘
Guardian

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