Star-Bright, Snow-White
By
Joel Haahtela
A fragile but forceful statement on behalf of those living at the fringes.
The year is 1889, and a student who has experienced tragedy keeps a diary in Paris. The young man becomes a correspondent at a news agency and leads the reader on a mesmerising journey to a seething Berlin and its intoxicating nights, and eventually to the colonised Far East.
But are there things that we cannot escape, that catch up to us – even if it’s decades down the road? One of the young man’s descendants acquires the diaries and transcribes them. He comes to realise that the life erased by history was not meaningless and its trail leads to the present day.
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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