Letters from Tove
4.390 kr.“I find myself talking to you about all the great joys, all the agonies, all my thoughts…” Letter to Eva Konikova, 1946
Out of the thousands of letters Tove Jansson wrote a cache remains that she addressed to her family, her dearest confidantes, and her lovers, male and female. Into these she spilled her innermost thoughts, defended her ideals and revealed her heart. To read these letters is both an act of startling intimacy and a rare privilege.
Penned with grace and humour, Letters from Tove offers an almost seamless commentary on Tove Jansson’s life as it unfolds within Helsinki’s bohemian circles and her island home. Spanning fifty years between her art studies and the height of Moomin fame, we share with her the bleakness of war; the hopes for love that were dashed and renewed, and her determined attempts to establish herself as an artist. Vivid, inspiring and shining with integrity, Letters from Tove shows precisely how an aspiring and courageous young artist can evolve into a very great one.
Notes from an Island
3.990 kr.For thirty summers Tove and her partner, the graphic artist, Tuulikki Pietilä, retreated to the tiny island of Klovharun, a rocky outcrop in the gulf of Finland, where they would live, paint and write, energised by the shifting seascapes and the island’s austere charms. Notes from an Island, offers both a memoir of, and homage to, this beloved island home. Tove’s spare prose, and Tuulikki’s subtle washes and aquatints, combine to form a work of meditative beauty.
This edition includes the first UK publication of Tove’s acclaimed 1961 essay/prose poem, The Island.
A Winter Book: Selected Stories
3.690 kr.Following the widely acclaimed and bestselling The Summer Book, here is A Winter Book collection of some of Tove Jansson’s best loved and most famous stories. Drawn from youth and older age, and spanning most of the twentieth century, this newly translated selection provides a thrilling showcase of the great Finnish writer’s prose, scattered with insights and home truths. It has been selected and is introduced by Ali Smith.
A Winter Book features 13 stories from Tove Jansson’s first book for adults, The Sculptor’s Daughter (1968) plus seven of her most cherished later stories (from 1971 to 1996), translated into English and published here for the first time.