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Finnish authors abroad
Finnish authors abroad
A sensational erotic novel that has become a modern classic!
Published in 13 languages to date!
“Like Lady Chatterley’s Lover as seen by Lord Chatterley…!” —Le Figaro, France
“At last, Lady Chatterley speaks!” —Kurt Vonnegut
Eeva Kilpi’s experimental erotic novel Tamara is far more than a fine piece of erotic writing dealing openly and beautifully with the relationship between a woman and a man. It is a breathtaking portrayal of female desire and the ambivalence of sexual relationships and a refreshingly unfashionable approach to love in its fullest sense.
The narrator is a paralyzed man who is capable of unconditional love. The subject of his love and his life partner is Tamara, a sexually active woman, offering him an erotic fantasy, bringing him pleasure and satisfaction by telling him about her sexual encounters in detail. Despite their unusual relationship, the two lovers bear moral responsibility for one another.
Tamara has been welcomed as an expression of a fierce desire for the emancipation of the female psyche.
With Tamara, Eeva Kilpi attacks (and not without humour), puritanism, hypocrisy and prejudice, everything that that makes life painful and leaves us feeling guilty. She demands the right for emotions and sexuality for women.
Tamara caused sensation and debate on publication in 1972, but has proved to be a sustainable work of art. It is a modern classic and a boldly personal song of praise for love and for freedom.
Albanian (Dituria, 2007)
Danish (Linghardt og Ringhof, 1984)
Dutch (Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1976)
English (USA: Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence/Dell 1978; Pocket edition: Pocket Books Simon & Schuster, 1979)
French (Flammarion 1975; Pocket edition 10/18, 2001)
German (C.J. Bucher, 1974)
Greek (Hestia, 1991)
Japanese (Futami Shbo, 1974)
Korean (Dulnyouk, 2016)
Slovenian (Pomurska, 1976)
Serbocroatian (Naprijed, 1981)
Swedish (Arlhild & Kärnekull 1973, Fripress 1985)
Finnish edition
German translation
French translation
English translation
Korean translation
“Tamara is far more than a fine piece of erotic writing. It is a refreshingly unfashionable approach to love in its fullest sense: it is about the concern of one human being for another, and about respect for others, however emotionally or physically deprived they may be.” —London Times Literary Supplement, UK
“Tamara, a social worker, and the narrator, and a college professor paralyzed from the waist down, share an intimate but unorthodox relationship. Between affairs with an extraordinary variety of men, Tamara lives with the narrator and confides in him every detail of her prolific love life. The climax of the novel concerns her affair with an “ordinary” man _ tweedy businessman, officer in the reserves, breeder of Doberman pinschers – a situation that Tamara finds particularly challenging.
Eeva Kilpi writes with humor, gusto and profound insight. When asked why she chose to tell her story through the eyes of a paralyzed scholar she explains, The disability of the narrator is based on my notion that we are all emotionally injured; the world is so unkind to emotion that it either dies or becomes crippled, trodden like a weed between the pavement stones.
A hot novel from a cold country, a Finnish sauna, in fact. Tamara is like Lady Chatterley’s Lover as seen by Lord Chatterley… “ —Le Figaro, France
“Eeva Kilpi is one of the most significant among mature writes in Finland today… Eeva Kilpi has always linked her insistence on the meaning of eroticism to her social outlook; she has repeatedly explained how important an active and free sex life is for all being and living.” —P.E.N. International Bulletin
“In its sureness, its frankness and the cool objectivity of its narrator, Tamara is akin to Nabokov’s Lolita. Not surprisingly, Tamara has had considerable popular success in Finland, with its mixture of seriousness and sex, frankness and female caprice. It also has the rarer virtue of being extremely well written.” —Books Abroad
“At last, Lady Chatterley speaks!” —Kurt Vonnegut
“At last, a love novel.” —Carsten Jensen
“Tamara was a sensual avalanche about a young woman who lavishly invests herself in an action, where no principles of selection really prevail, the only thing that matter is breaking the loneliness of the body. The young Tamara herself was a sort of Pippi Longstocking in fishnet stockings, a student of philosophy of language, a world-improving consultant who with considerable humor took on a partially wheelchair-bound scientist without counting the gold stars in her notebook. After the groundbreaking Tamara Eeva Kilpi launched as a portrayer of ‘middle-aged, lonely women’, something which was not likely to delight male literary critics.” —Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden