Marija’s Love
By
Joel Haahtela
A wonderful novel about love, the comfort of old paintings and the impossibility of living.
Marija’s Love describes the moments on which one can build an entire life in a stunningly beautiful way.
A Finnish teenager and Marija from Serbia fall in love in Prague in the summer of 1996. Twenty-five years after Marija has disappeared, they meet by chance at the train station of Trieste. Reunited, they continue their journey to Rome together where ancient art and the vagaries of writing await them. But the questions remain. Why did Marija disappear? What really happened all those years ago? Were the curtains in the hotel room blue or white, as Marija says? Where is the source of memories?
About the author
Joel Haahtela (b. 1972) is an author and psychiatrist. He was inspired to specialise in psychiatry after reading Oliver Sacks’ book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.The author has been recognized with two Finlandia Prize nominations and has also been nominated for the Runeberg Prize for literature two times. People’s stories are important to him in both of his professions, and the self is a key theme in his writing. Haahtela aspires to understand the human condition and the meaning of people’s own decisions in their lives. His parallel careers complement each other very well and Haahtela believes he will never stop writing. When he was still a student, Joel Haahtela published a collection of short stories titled Unicum Zwack together with friends. These short stories gave him the impetus to write a novel during his studies. His debut novel, Twice Disappeared, was published in the spring of 1999.In 2023, Joel Haahtela was awarded the Veijo Meri prize, a recognition by the Otava Literary Foundation for significant efforts in Finnish literature.
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