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The Year of the Hare

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The Year of the Hare

By: Arto Paasilinna
Narrated by: Simon Vance
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About this listen

A delightfully witty and mordant modern classic from Finland: the story of a journalist who befriends an injured hare and embarks into the Finnish wilderness

Kaarlo Vatanen is fed up with his life. He's sick of his job, his wife, his urban lifestyle in Helsinki. But all this changes one warm summer's evening, when he encounters an injured hare on a deserted country road.

On an impulse he can't fully explain, Vatanen abruptly abandons his car, his home, his wife and his job to chase the hare into the forest. A year of comic misadventures ensues, where Vatanen and his unlikely companion battle through forest fires, pagan sacrifices, military war games and encounters with murderous bears, kept afloat by the help and understanding of other sympathetic free spirits.

A much-loved classic in Finland, The Year of the Hare is a freewheeling adventure through the Finnish countryside, and a witty portrayal of one man's long detour from conventional living.

©1975 Pushkin Press (P)2024 Pushkin Press
Contemporary Fiction Literary Fiction Witty

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Warm, funny and light hearted read

Genuinely a ‘laugh out loud’ novel, but one that also encourages some questioning. What do you want from your life, and which rules are important to follow? Some stereotypes of its time are included, but the humour and warm intention of the book left me feeling a positive glow and reminded me that we need to follow our own moral compass.

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