Selma Kaasinen
Araukaria
Aarni Publishing (Finland), 2021
Young biology researcher Ronja wakes up from a strong painkiller coma in a white hospital room. Her mind is numb and fuzzy, and her body doesn't feel like her own either. It's as if the body is covered by foreign skin where you can gently feel it, and its proportions don't feel right either. Her mind doesn't want to remember how it got to this. The last thing Ronja remembers was screaming out of terror in English, and now she hears her mother chirping in North Karelian.
Araukaria takes the reader on a dizzying journey to both the United States and New South Wales, Australia, a region that has become familiar from the extensive forest fires in recent years' news pictures. The continents of Araukaria are united by fire and its all-destructive power.
- Synopsis taken from the Finnish NOTE: This book is published in Finnish
About the Author
Selma Kaasinen is an Australian Finnish author based in Canberra. Selma Kaasinen's first book was a collection of short stories titled Woollen Socks and Other Short Stories (2018) as a paperback and ebook. Araukaria is her debut novel and was published in Finland (2021). To date, Selma has only published in her native language, Finnish, but hopes to also publish in English in the future. Listen to an In conversation with Selma Kaasinen
