Otava

Henri is leaving Tuulikki after thirty years of marriage. Tuulikki has always liked surprises, but not quite like this. Shouldn’t Henri be eternally grateful for having a wife as charming as she is?

But Tuulikki isn’t as pure as the driven snow. It’s just that her sins were committed so long ago that the damage has been nearly forgotten.

Their daughter Sofia is writing an endless book of sins in her mind – I yelled at Kerttu about her muddy boots, I love a man who is spoken for – and when she finds a lump under her armpit, her mother freaks out in an almost grotesque manner.

When you see your life over again on fast forward, its peculiar rules start to take shape. Why is it that loving is sometimes a sin, and other times the sin is that we don’t love enough?

The Book of Sins follows the convoluted map of human relationships and family life with delicacy and deliciousness, and makes everyday facts feel a little more magical.

Author, screenwriter and columnist Katja Kallio has an exceptional knack for sharp-eyed descriptions of human relationships that bring together the comic and serious. Her books Types, Cinematographic Memory, and On the Rocks found a wide readership, and her novels By Moonlight and Going Solo were also adapted for film.

The film If You Love Me, written by Katja Kallio and directed by Neil Hardwick, premiers in winter 2009.

Katja Kallio’s previous novel On the Rocks garnered considerable international interest. Publishing rights for the book have been sold in Germany and the Netherlands.