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Overview
“Escapism at its best . . . Just pure fun.” —NPR.org
“Which of us has not had that wonderfully seditious idea: to play hooky for a while from life as we know it?” With these words from his foreword, Pico Iyer puts his finger on the exhilaratingly anarchic appeal of The Year of the Hare, a novel in the bestselling tradition of Watership Down, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Life of Pi.
While out on assignment, a journalist hits a hare with his car. This small incident becomes life-changing: he decides to quit his job, leave his wife, sell his possessions, and spend a year wandering the wilds of Finland—with the bunny as his boon companion.
What ensues is a series of comic misadventures, as everywhere they go—whether chased up a tree by dogs, or to a formal state dinner, or in pursuit of a bear across the Finnish border with Russia—they leave mayhem (and laughter!) in their wake.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780143117926 |
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Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 12/28/2010 |
Pages: | 208 |
Sales rank: | 436,521 |
Product dimensions: | 5.24(w) x 7.58(h) x 0.54(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Pico Iyer (foreword) wrote an essay that became one of The New York Times’ most e-mailed articles, about leaving a life as a successful journalist for a simpler life. He is the author of two novels and numerous nonfiction books about the cultures of the world, including The Art of Stillness, The Open Road, Autumn Light, and A Beginner’s Guide to Japan. He has never been to Finland except through the pages of this book.
What People are Saying About This
"This is escapism at its best. . . . Really, it's just pure fun, like an adult fairy tale-a fantasy of what might happen if one day you just said, 'Oh, the hell with it.' "
-Lynn Neary, NPR.org
"[A] wonderful book . . . If you are too timid to actually cut all the ties to your 'civilized' life, but still have a yearning to get away from clocks and calendars, Arto Paasilinna's The Year of the Hare provides the perfect escape literature. . . . The humor in this book just sneaks up on you. . . . [It] will have you laughing and gasping by turns. . . . The writing is as spare and clean as the lines of Scandinavian design. . . . Of the many lines in this book that I cherished, the last is one of the most delicious: 'Vatanen is a man to be reckoned with.' So is this book."
-Lonely Planet
"A fable of the joys of freedom . . . The hare proves to be a delightful, undemanding, and loyal companion, who can laugh, listen, and feel embarrassment."
-The Boston Globe
"Paasilinna's style is all Finn-a sly sense of humor, a simplicity, a moral compass that points firmly north and out of doors, away from cities. . . . Readers root for Vatanen as he leaps off the mad merry-go-round."
-Los Angeles Times
"Compelling . . . You might just find yourself wishing for a hare to enter your life in the near future."
-Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"Beguiling, gently ironic . . . [an] ode to spontaneity and serendipity."
-National Geographic Traveler
"[A] joy . . . The glory of the outdoors is celebrated here, through each season, and we can nearly smell the early clover and meadow vetchling of the hare's diet. . . . Vatanen is who we want to be [and] who we yearn to be brave enough to become, as soon as we stop waiting for the timing to be right."
-BookPage
"Hilarious . . . With its fiercely independent protagonist and its depiction of Finland's wild northland, this comic novel will offer readers a rare opportunity to experience Finland and read one of that country's most popular authors."
-Library Journal
"The Year of the Hare offers enjoyable yarns: fun adventures, agreeably related. . . . It's so good-natured and has so much varied action-and that animal-appeal-that it makes for a consistently enjoyable read."
-The Complete Review
"Exhilarating . . . The sheer literary delight of Arto Paasilinna's comic novels is one of the best-kept secrets in Finland. . . . You'll want to laugh out loud at all the good parts, and savor every lean, simple, honest sentence."
-Shelf Awareness
"The Year of the Hare is only the most Finnish, and perhaps most antically Zen-ish, of a shelf-load of books that tell us to find and live by our own ideas of contentment."
-The Wall Street Journal
"An exemplary comic novel, full of amiable if binding warnings about the septic follies of civilization-to be read with rising anxiety and delight."
-Thomas McGuane
"Step out of the domestic gulag and into The Year of the Hare, a novel that depicts the confident freedom of the journeyman. I loved it."
-Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft
"I love The Year of the Hare. . . . Which of us wouldn't secretly want to live in a novel as fresh and as full of events as this one?"
-Pico Iyer, from the Foreword
"Paasilinna has been amusing Finns for thirty years and readers in twenty-five languages."
-The New York Times
“Step out of the domestic gulag and into The Year of the Hare, a novel that depicts the confident freedom of the journeyman. I loved it.” --(Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft)