‘This book is stunning, phenomenal, wow.’ Cecelia Ahern, author of P.S. I Love You

WINNER OF THE FINLANDIA PRIZE

Seven women meet in a white, undefined space seconds after their deaths

Time, as we understand it, has ceased to exist, and all bodily sensations have disappeared. None of the women can remember what happened to them, where they are, or how they got there. They don’t know each other. In turn they try to remember, to piece together the fragments of their lives, their identities, their lost loves, and to pinpoint the moment they left their former lives behind.

Deftly playing with genres from essay to poetry, Oneiron is an astonishing work that explores the question of what follows death and delves deep into the lives and experiences of seven unforgettable women.

Today, change in our material lives is a constant. Many now living have seen the advent not only of the mobile phone and the Internet, but also of space exploration, vaccines and even indoor plumbing. This in contrast to the world you now enter in The Railroad, where the diminutive Matti and Liisa are aging in a corner of the world in which peasant life has remained unaltered for centuries. When the iron rails reach the forests of Eastern Finland, however, that solitude and constancy are forever altered. The Railroad (1884) was prose writer, poet, translator and journalist Juhani Aho's first major literary work. There is some disagreement as to whether he or Aleksis Kivi (best known for his 1870 novel Seven Brothers) should be named the first professional Finnish author. There is no doubt, however, that Aho's modern usage of the Finnish language and application of realistic style - although romantic elements also appear in The Railroad - place him as one of the progenitors of Finnish literature, which has been closely identified with realism ever since. In both his topics and his style we witness a critical stage in the cultural development of what is now one of the most advanced nations in the world.