Pentinpeijaiset is Douglas Robinson's debut novel about the life and work over three decades of the great Finnish poet and translator Pentti Saarikoski. Fact and fiction blur in the book: the raven, the bear, the spirits, the dreams, the wives, and the landscapes.
When the book came out in the fall of 2007 my first thought was, could anything new be said about Pentti Saarikoski, so gnawed to the bone did the subject seem. But Pentinpeijaiset was in fact surprisingly intelligent and funny. The author has truly familiarized himself with Finnish culture and literature and done a lot of background work for the book.
An excellent addition to the books about Saarikoski.