A tense, spare, cold-blooded Finnish novel about family, inheritance, violence and the rot that gathers inside silence.

Set in a remote farmhouse after the Finnish Civil War, it brings two brothers back into the same house — one returning from exile, one carrying the weight of staying behind — and lets old loyalties, resentments and buried crimes thaw only enough to become dangerous. 

The novel has the compression of a stage play and the atmosphere of a folk tale left outside in winter: fathers, sons, brothers, land, hunger, betrayal, all stripped back until only the bone-structure remains. One for readers who like translated fiction that does not explain itself too much; morally grim, cleanly cut, and full of weather.

Peirene Press paperback, 2013 reprint. Very good copy with light shelf wear.