Chitambo
Translator: Sarah Death
Author: Hagar Olsson
Publisher: Norvik Press
Year of Publication: 2020
‘For us – children of a confined era, growing up in stuffy rooms crammed with dusty draperies, little china dogs, plaster ornaments and the first monstrous, wind-up gramophones – there was a strong and vivid impression that the new freedom would drag us all out into the streets, old and young, helter-skelter into the raucous crowds.’
Vega Maria has been trapped since birth in a vice of conflicting parental expectations. Her father brings her up to admire history’s heroic male adventurers, while her mother channels her towards housework and conformity. In a time of revolution and civil war in early twentieth-century Finland, Vega finds it hard to identify her own calling, alighting first on the cause of feminism but feeling her way towards a wider humanitarian mission. A kaleidoscope of changing roles for Vega whirls us through this compelling modernist novel, multi-layered, accessible and funny. Hagar Olsson’s evocation of Helsinki is second to none:
