Vanishing Point

By Joel Haahtela

A multi-layered novel about a man on a quest that leads him through the fascinating landscapes of an exceptional short-story writer. At the grocer’s, a doctor happens to run into Magda Roux, a Frenchwoman who has come to Finland to look for a missing man. She has a lead: the French edition of a book by a late Finnish author. The doctor remembers reading the book and liking it and he decides to help her. The next day, Magda disappears from her hotel without warning. The whole thing is troubling to the doctor. What does he know about the woman, or the man she was looking for, or the author of that particular book? He wants to find out more. ‘I waited until the lights went out in the hallway, breathed silently, and in my mind I saw the door open, and Raija appeared in the doorway with a suitcase in her hand. She was leaving again.’ Vanishing Point is Joel Haahtela’s seventh novel. Combining fact and fiction, he breathes life into the landscape of the Finnish author Raija Siekkinen (1953-2004), while at the same time pays homage to a great short-story writer, a depicter of the private worlds of the blessed.

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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.