People in the Summer Night

The son of a landless peasant, Sillanpaa studied natural science at Helsinki University, but his interest soon shifted to writing. His first novel was published in 1916, and his second, a naturalistic work titled Meek Heritage (1919), established him as a major Finnish writer and won him a lifetime pension from the government. His next book to show more receive international fame was The Maid Silja (1931), a story of the Finnish Civil War of 1918. Sillanpaa writes of the rural people he knew in his youth, exploring with understanding and sympathy the forces that determine their lives. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1939. (Bowker Author Biography) show less