Columns The “impossible” hall of Alastalo turned into German – and Stefan Moster, who performed the miracle, is now nominated for the country’s best-known translator’s award

Must be at least four years after Stefan Moster (b. 1964) hit the street in Helsinki. He is the one that German publishers listen to when considering including Finnish works in their programming. And in addition to his own significant work as a writer, Moster has also translated them into his mother tongue: novels, poetry, plays.

I know him so much that I doubt he knows Finnish better than I do.

Still, the information on the street amazed me. Moster said he would turn around Volter Kilven a classy expression and a huge classic In the hall of the nave house (1933) in German.

That’s choking on that, inch.

I personally wore it Naked house one chapter pace my comrade Ilkka Malmbergin (1954–2016) from January to Midsummer in a reading circle published in the columns of the cultural editorial office in 2000. Ilkka was nicknamed “Ihantola” and I was “Kämärä”. The division of roles arose naturally, as one of us was able to get excited about extreme accomplishments.

But Annas be, Moster’s translation Im Saal von Alastalo was published last October by Mare Verlag.

The reception has been good when it has been. In Germany, the same dilemma applies as in Finland: even large magazines may not find a qualified critic who agrees to a thousand-page contract with modest compensation.

So Moster especially praises the Neue Zürcher Zeitung’s assessment of “downright amazing”. You can read the criticism from here.

The best is however, the fact that the German edition was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair in the series of translation books was the first Finnish work ever.

There are five candidates in total. The winner will be announced on March 17th.

The Frankfurt trade fair in October is the largest book market event in Europe. Leipzig, on the other hand, focuses on content. According to Moster, the recognition given there is practically the only translator’s award that receives public attention.

Before German From the nave has been obtained only Thomas Warburton Swedish I Salen på Alastalo (1997).

Information on Leipzig’s candidates and other program can be found from here.

A shield novel the ninth chapter is already getting started – on page 358! – towards the issue, the construction of a parking vessel with the joint funds of the Gustav hosts.

The whole page is a single sentence. The Shield is a hobby after all.

But what does it mean, for example, “… the southern grove from the people of the free lungs of the sea and the honest wind to wipe from the platform the eastern aspirations of the east on their continents …”, so how do I say in Finnish?

Came for the award or not, Stefan Moster is the winner.

A sample from the beginning of the ninth chapter of the first part of the novel

Volter Shield: In the hall of the Nave House. Ottawa, 1933. 826 p.

“A chapter where there is already real talk of a park, a parking ship,” as the author himself describes the content of the ninth chapter.

“The mood in the hall was quite improved, albeit a little vigilant. As in the seas, when the blizzard swirls, when the beak of the mink is behind a gusty terrestrial wind, and strikes from the mainland its bags like sails, wipes the reindeer as a whole. a cow whispering and licking its muzzle in a summer garden, like at sea with water-like headwaters, but the signs of the sky in the direction of the clouds are reminiscent and bubbling with the sea floats in its foam chains the people and the honest wind sweep the eastern aspirations of the eastern plains as sparse on their continents, as in the whispers of the sea, when the hand is already reserving the rudder wood for the severe pressures of the play but the eye still keeps an eye on what the rooster boy brushed on the side next to him, so in the hall now: the idea of ​​tilting the rafters and wetting them from the plume, but the eyes were already a little in the shadows of each other’s eyebrows, alert to the other claims of heaven, and the fingers of the thought even with the sheep pastures of the cloud, and with the clean, which the color of the water hints at from its secret.“

Volter Shield: Im Saal von Alastalo. Germanized by Stefan Moster. Mare Verlag, 2021. 1 136 s.

“In the case of war, it is possible to carry out the operation. So, in the case of the sea, the land of the landfill is mixed with water from the soil and the soil in the Seine and in the area of ​​the landfill, the water is used as a link to the water. Back to her saint and sengt, the fall is not at the same time as the slurry of the slurry and the fleece of the flax of the flame of the flounder, so that the land of the sea to the sea, In the case of fluxing in the wool, the wafers are connected to the mains and the wafers are replaced by a blanket, and Süd mit aller Macht der freien Meereslungen tost, und ehrlicher Wind die östlichen Wirbel wie Elstern von der Weiten Fläche ave festland fegt, so wie auf dem Meer In the case of a handwritten tool, the bodywork of the woodpiece is replaced by a blanket of the same type of wood, which is not suitable for use in the case of a well-dressed plow. The mixture is obtained from the woods, and the mixture is replaced by a pair of rings, which are recycled and linked to the woods in Germany, with the result that they are present in the woods. , wo jeweils das Dollbord des Denkens sich negt und schwallweise nass wird; However, in the case of wood chips in the woods, the weight of the wood is very high and the weight of the wood is reduced to the same weight as in the case of wood, For the purposes of this Regulation, the aid granted to the Community has been approved by the Member States.“