Set during the catastrophic Finnish famine of 1867–68, White Hunger is a spare, devastating novel that follows Marja, a farmer's wife forced to leave her dying husband and set out across a frozen landscape with her children in search of food.

Aki Ollikainen shows us hunger slowly reshapes memory, morality and the boundaries between the living and the dead. The snow-covered landscape becomes both physical setting and psychological state, while brief, luminous moments of tenderness interrupt the relentless cold. At under 150 pages, White Hunger achieves an emotional scale far larger than its length suggests. 

Originally published in Finnish as Nälkävuosi, the novel was shortlisted for the Finlandia Prize and helped establish Ollikainen as one of Finland's most important contemporary writers.

2015 Peirene Press paperback. Very good condition with only light shelf wear. Clean, bright and tightly bound.