An Anatomy of Hide-and-Seek

By Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen brings out a magical novel about the search for a lost brother who disappeares during a hide-and-seek game. 

M is no ordinary child. Like a spy from another world, M meticulously studies his peers to learn about everyday things that others take for granted, and has a hard time fitting into the mould of the city of Marrasvirta in the late 1970’s. M’s older brother, the brilliant Alvar, brings some joy into his brother’s life by inventing a peculiar game: ‘the Martian Hide- and-Seek.’ The setup is simple, Alvar hides and M has to find him, but the rules are disproportionately harsh: M can’t refuse the game and Alvar can only come back home once M has found him. 

As the hide-and-seek progresses, M experiences it at the frontier of dream and reality while Alvar makes use of his vast knowledge of illusionist tricks. 

But one day, Alvar actually disappears, leaving M tormented with guilt. Years later, M heads out to discover the truth about Alvar and his strange hide-and-seek game. The journey brings M to new parts of the city of Marrasvirta, where night creatures in studded jackets and fanatical skinheads indulge in nightly dances of death. 

An Anatomy of Hide-and-Seek is the fifth novel from Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, who depicts an amazing journey into loyalty, betrayal and guilt.

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About the author

Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (b. 1966) is a Finnish author and a teacher of literature.In the early 1970’s, when he was five, Jääskeläinen lived in a block of flats by the old cemetery of Jyväskylä (a city in Central Finland) and believed in vampires. In the early 1980’s, he still dreamed of vampires and fell in love with Jeanne Moreau in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Ten years later Pasi wrote his first set of short stories. He won a national writing competition of Sci-Fi and Fantasy stories four times and then decided to become a writer.  In Jääskeläinen’s works, the world is thrown out of place and new dimensions are revealed beneath the familiar reality, somewhat in the spirit of the early works of Mihail Bulgakov, Peter Høeg and Stephen King. The author has won numerous awards, including two Kuvastaja Awards in 2007 and 2011, given by the Finnish Tolkien Society for the best fantasy book of the year. His works have been translated into 15 languages.