A journalist hits a hare with his car, abandons his ordinary life, and wanders north through Finland with the injured animal in tow, moving through forests, small towns, bureaucratic encounters, comic disasters and moments of serene pastoral freedom.

It’s one of those books that looks light until it starts behaving like a small philosophical fable. Good for readers who like eccentric European fiction, animals as moral interruptions, men fleeing their own lives, and books that sit somewhere between Tove Jansson, Milan Kundera, Magnus Mills, César Aira and a very dry Nordic folk tale.

Text Publishing paperback, this Australian edition published 2011. First published in Finnish in 1975; translated from the Finnish by Herbert Lomas. Good second-hand condition, with some visible cover rubbing/marking and light handling.