Red Book of Farewells

For fans of Claire-Louise Bennett and Eileen Myles, an enigmatic work of autofiction set in a time of leftist politics and criminalized sexuality.Pirkko Saisios autofictional novel, in Mia Spangenbergs tender translation, is a mesmerizing account of radical politics and sexual awakening in a series of farewellsto her mother, to the idealism of youth, to friends and lovers, and finally to her grown daughter. The novel embeds readers in a delirious Finland, where art and communist politics are hopelessly intertwined, and where queer love, still a crime, thrives in underground bars. But then one morning in 2002, on a remote island off the coast of Finland, the narrator Pirkko Saisio informs her publisher that shes accidentally deleted her latest manuscript,The Red Book of Farewells. Playful and mysterious,The Red Book of Farewellsis a work that stoically embraces the small revolutions of moving on.