The Last of the Vostyachs

‘Part mystery, part Scandinavian-noir, with a splash of 12 Monkeys.’
* Readings Monthly *
‘When I reviewed New Finnish Grammar, I edged towards using the word “genius” to describe Marani. I’m doing so again now.’ * Guardian *
‘A roller-coaster ride whisking the reader alternatively through zones of darkness, hilarity, cruelty, tenderness, the near-lubricious…There’s something for almost everyone.’ – PEN
‘A riot of comic unpredictability.’ * Times Literary Supplement *
‘For Italian fiction in translation, there is nobody more important being published today. This is a beautiful, intelligently funny novel.’
* Italia *
‘Landry is an adept translator, of the kind who likes to make it seem that the book has all along been written in English.’ * London Review of Books *
Marani’s fascination with languages, and with the silencing of language in particular, permeates this captivating work…Part murder mystery set in the Arctic, part study of language, part Norse saga—though spiced with its own modernity, magic and humour—and part evocation of the Arctic wilderness, Marani’s novel shows his extraordinary skills and erudition.’ * Sydney Morning Herald / Age *

Diego Marani was born in Ferrara in 1959. He has worked as a translator and policy officer for the European Commission and has written several other novels, collections of essays and short stories. Marani’s earlier novel, New Finnish Grammar, was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award and the Best Translated Book Award.

Judith Landry won the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her translation of New Finnish Grammar.

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