The Beggar & the Hare
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In the vein of Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Hundred Year Old Man, a hugely entertaining satirical tale, at once humorous and profound, about a Romanian beggar living on the streets of Helsinki.
A modern-day rewriting of the popular Finish parable "The Year of the Hare" by Arto Paasilinna
Vatanescu, a young Romanian construction worker, desires two things: a future for himself and a pair of football boots for his son. So off he goes to a cold, dark country to beg.
Despite reading about Finland in the novels of Arto Paasilinna, Vatanescu has no idea what he is in for, and soon he is living on the streets of Helsinki, throwing feasts from the contents of a dumpster with his fellow beggars. Little does he realize, however, that his employer is about to ruin his bacchanal, and much, much more…
As Vatanescu flees from international crime organizations as well as the Finnish police, he finds an unlikely companion: a hare who has been sentenced to death for living within Helsinki’s city limits. Together, Vatanescu and his new fellow fugitive set on a journey from Lapland to the National Idea Park construction site, to the upper echelons of Finnish politics.
Known for his satirical humor and picaresque style, Tuomas Kyro offers an unusual tale in the vein of Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man and Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. At once humorous and deeply moving, The Beggar and the Hare is a modern tour de force.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Modern Finland, from the streets of Helsinki to Lapland's berry bogs, comes alive in this satiric retelling of the 1975 Finnish picaresque fable The Year of the Hare. Vatanescu, the update's antihero, is a down-on-his-luck Romanian transported to the Finnish capital by an organized crime/begging syndicate. He hopes to earn money to buy his son football boots, but instead finds it a struggle simply to survive. What seems like a stroke of luck (a free barbecue at the beggars' camp, courtesy of a trash can) ignites the wrath of the syndicate's man-on-the-scene, the Russian thug Yegor Kugar, who sends Vatanescu on the run, where he eventually finds a companion: an injured rabbit. His seeming misfortune results in sympathetic support from such unlikely sources as a Vietnamese restaurant owner, a retired Finnish couple in their country retreat, and, most surprising and helpful of all, a politician. At length, the erstwhile beggar and the rabbit join forces with a magician (of course). Kyr pokes fun at the powerful and powerless, freedom and oppression, charity and greed, technology and tradition, obscurity and celebrity, Finns and non-Finns, appealing to readers with irreverence throughout. By intermingling caricature (Yegor's memoir), commentary (the politician's strategy), and comedy (Vatanescu in the sauna with the old Finn), Kyr concocts a cynical and hilarious world that informs one man's journey in search of a simple life of modest comfort and decent values for himself, for his family, and for his rabbit.
