Sinijärv recommends three Nordic books and praises Kallas novel

Estonian writer and cultural adviser Karl Martin Sinijärv recommends three books, calling Suvi Ratinen’s novel about Aino Kallas’s life in exile “divinely good,” ERR reports. His choices also include a children’s mystery and a crime novel.

“The Hunt for the Last Dinosaur” by Jørn Lier Horst and Hans Jørgen Sandnes is part of their Detective Agency No. 2 series. Sinijärv says the book’s puzzles, which appear on each page, can keep adults involved too, though he found them easy to solve. He says the story should appeal to young readers and their grandparents.

Sinijärv also recommends “The Victim,” by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger. He describes it as a strong addition to the authors’ crime series and suggests that new readers start with an earlier book if they are unfamiliar with their work.

Ratinen’s “The Refugee: A Novel about Aino Kallas’s Life in Exile” is, Sinijärv writes, one of the best novels he has read in a long time. He says the book turns Kallas’s life into vivid fiction, showing how a person can begin again in a new country later in life, find surviving children and adapt to a changed world.

Sinijärv says details about the possessions Kallas left behind in Estonia during the last world war are less compelling than the human story. He recalls that the family had accumulated four shipping containers’ worth of goods by the time they returned from Kallas’s period as ambassador in London.

He concludes that Kallas, as a literary figure, connected several Nordic countries in different ways. Sinijärv adds that Estonia is the world’s third-northernmost country, and that all the others extend farther south.