Pirkko Saisio (Finland)

(b. 1949) studied drama and completed her actor’s training in 1975. Her debut novel, The Course of Life (Elämänmeno, 1975), won the J. H. Erkko Award. Saisio has been nominated for the Finlandia Prize seven times, winning it with The Red Book of Farewells (Punainen erokirja, 2003), the final installment in the praised Helsinki Trilogy. She has, among other awards, the Aleksis Kivi Prize and the State Literature Award. Apart from novels, she has written numerous plays and scripts for film and television and is a well-known theatre director. In 2025, The Red Book of Farewells was published in Georgian by Sulakauri Publishing, translated from Finnish by Dimitri Gogolashvili.