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The Summer Book
''The Summer Book'' (in the original Swedish, ''Sommarboken'') is a book written by Finnish author Tove Jansson in 1972. Plot An elderly woman and her six-year-old granddaughter Sophia spend a summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland exploring, talking about life, nature, everything but their feelings about Sophia's mother's death and their love for one another. Reception The novelist Ali Smith, reviewing the book in ''The Guardian'', wrote that Jansson was better known for her Moomin books than for her novels, and that with her worldwide fame, she knew the virtues of withdrawal. In Smith's view, ''The Summer Book'' is an astonishing achievement of artistry, "the writing so lightly kept, so simple-seeming, so closely concerned with the weighing of moments that any extra weight of exegesis is too much." Telling the tale of the child and her grandmother in the simplest language, Smith writes, "The threat of brevity, even on this timeless island in this timeless, go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tove Jansson
Tove Marika Jansson (; 9 August 1914 – 27 June 2001) was a Swedish-speaking population of Finland, Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. Brought up by artistic parents, Jansson studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Stockholm, Helsinki and Paris. Her first solo art exhibition was in 1943. At the same time, she was writing short stories and articles for publication, as well as creating the graphics for book covers and other purposes. She continued to work as an artist and a writer for the rest of her life. Jansson wrote the ''Moomins, Moomin'' books for children, starting in 1945 with ''The Moomins and the Great Flood''. The next two books, ''Comet in Moominland'' and ''Finn Family Moomintroll'', published in 1946 and 1948 respectively, were highly successful in sales, adding to sales of the first book. For her work as a children's writer she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966. The Moomins also spun off to a comic strip, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Review Of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity. ''Esquire'' called it "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language." In 1970, writer Tom Wolfe described it as "the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic". The ''Review'' publishes long-form reviews and essays, often by well-known writers, original poetry, and has letters and personals advertising sections that had attracted critical comment. In 1979 the magazine founded the ''London Review of Books'', which soon became independent. In 1990 it founded an Italian edition, ''la Rivista dei Libri'', published until 2010. The ''Review'' has a book publishing division, established in 1999, called New York Review Books, which publishes reprints of classics, as well as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swedish-language Literature
Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic language spoken predominantly in Sweden and in parts of Finland. It has at least 10 million native speakers, the fourth most spoken Germanic language and the first among any other of its type in the Nordic countries overall. Swedish, like the other Nordic languages, is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish, although the degree of mutual intelligibility is largely dependent on the dialect and accent of the speaker. Written Norwegian and Danish are usually more easily understood by Swedish speakers than the spoken languages, due to the differences in tone, accent, and intonation. Standard Swedish, spoken by most Swedes, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varietie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1972 Novels
Year 197 ( CXCVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Magius and Rufinus (or, less frequently, year 950 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 197 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * February 19 – Battle of Lugdunum: Emperor Septimius Severus defeats the self-proclaimed emperor Clodius Albinus at Lugdunum (modern Lyon). Albinus commits suicide; legionaries sack the town. * Septimius Severus returns to Rome and has about 30 of Albinus's supporters in the Senate executed. After his victory he declares himself the adopted son of the late Marcus Aurelius. * Septimius Severus forms new naval units, manning all the triremes in Italy with heavily armed troops for war in the East. His soldiers embark on an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signe Hammarsten-Jansson
Signe "Ham" Hammarsten-Jansson (née Hammarsten, 1 June 1882 Hannäs, – 6 July 1970) was a Swedish-Finnish graphic artist who designed, among other things, around 220 Postage stamps and postal history of Finland, Finnish postage stamps during the course of three decades.''Suomen postimerkkitaiteilijat''. Vaarnas, Kalle. Mitä-Missä-Milloin vuosikirja 1974. 1974. She was the mother of Tove Jansson, creator of the ''Moomin'' characters. Biography Signe Hammarsten came from a respectable Swedish clerical family and was the child of a pastor's daughter and a court chaplain. Hammarsten's parents were opposed to her becoming an artist, and as a girl she had considered a career as a surgeon. Hammarsten went through 8 years of primary school, and then studied at Stockholm University between 1901 and 1905. She began to work as a drawing teacher at a Stockholm girls' school. It was during a study trip to Paris in 1910 that Hammarsten met and fell in love with the 24-year-old Finnish scul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophia Jansson
Vivica Sophia Jansson (born 1962 in Helsinki) is the daughter of cartoonist Lars Jansson and the niece of the famous Finnish writer and painter Tove Jansson. Jansson has worked as a Spanish language teacher, creative/artistic director, chairman, and majority shareholder of Oy Moomin Characters, Ltd, and provided direct oversight together with her father for the 1990 ''Moomin'' animated series. Moomin Characters Oy Ltd Growing up in the center of the collaboration of efforts between her aunt and father, Jansson gained an intimate window into the creative processes behind the ''Moomin'' comic strip series. As Tove's efforts became directed more at writing and the strip's production became more the effort of her father, Jansson became an active help in management of the visual aspects of ''Moomin'' as an intellectual property. In 1979, Lars Jansson founded the limited liability company, Moomin Characters Oy Ltd, now headed by Roleff Kråkström. According to a 2004 article in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Pullman
Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman (born 19 October 1946) is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy ''His Dark Materials'' and ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ'', a fictionalised biography of Jesus. In 2008, ''The Times'' named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945". In a 2004 BBC poll, he was named the eleventh most influential person in British culture. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature. ''Northern Lights'', the first volume in ''His Dark Materials'', won the 1995 Carnegie Medal of the Library Association as the year's outstanding English-language children's book.(Carnegie Winner 1995) . Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners. |
Moomins
The Moomins ( sv, Mumintroll) are the central characters in a series of novels, short stories, and a comic strip by Finnish writer and illustrator Tove Jansson, originally published in Swedish by Schildts in Finland. They are a family of white, round fairy-tale characters with large snouts that make them resemble the hippopotamus. However, despite this resemblance, the Moomin family are trolls. The family live in their house in Moominvalley and have had many adventures with their various friends. In all, nine books were released in the series, together with five picture books and a comic strip being released between 1945 and 1993. The Moomins have since been the basis for numerous television series, films and even two theme parks: one called Moomin World in Naantali, Finland, and another Akebono Children's Forest Park in Hannō, Saitama, Japan. Etymology In a letter to Paul Ariste, an Estonian linguist, Jansson wrote in 1973 that she had created an artificial word whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland across Estonia to the south. Finland covers an area of with a population of 5.6 million. Helsinki is the capital and largest city, forming a larger metropolitan area with the neighbouring cities of Espoo, Kauniainen, and Vantaa. The vast majority of the population are ethnic Finns. Finnish, alongside Swedish, are the official languages. Swedish is the native language of 5.2% of the population. Finland's climate varies from humid continental in the south to the boreal in the north. The land cover is primarily a boreal forest biome, with more than 180,000 recorded lakes. Finland was first inhabited around 9000 BC after the Last Glacial Period. The Stone Age introduced several differ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ali Smith
Ali Smith CBE FRSL (born 24 August 1962) is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting". Early life and education Smith was born in Inverness on 24 August 1962 to Ann and Donald Smith. Her parents were working-class and she was raised in a council house in Inverness. From 1967 to 1974 she attended St. Joseph's RC Primary school, then went on to Inverness High School, leaving in 1980. She studied a joint degree in English language and literature at the University of Aberdeen from 1980 to 1985, coming first in her class in 1982 and gaining a top first in Senior Honours English in 1984. She won the University's Bobby Aitken Memorial Prize for Poetry in 1984. From 1985 to 1990 she attended Newnham College, Cambridge, studying for a PhD in American and Irish modernism. During her time at Cambridge, she began writing plays and as a result did not complete her doctorate. Smith moved to Edin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
