Risen from the Dead

The classics of Finnish literature, Maiju Lassila, are well known to Russian readers from the humorous novella “Behind the Cackoo Sticks” and to viewers from the film of the same name.

In the novella “The Resurrection of the Dead,” also translated into Russian by Mikhail Zoshchenko, the author carries the reader into an urban setting. In this world lives and acts the main character, Ionni Lump eri—the tramp and lover of life.

A lottery win and financial frauds, two successful matches, bottles of vodka and of acid, a gang of robbers and the police. How many he got mixed up in things, how many he ruined! Someone’s character lied a bit, another guessed things differently, and a third simply misunderstood… And everything ends up in a heap!

“An excellent writer: concise, smart, mocking, exactly knowing what he wants… He adores confusion, the whole mess—I do too, although I almost never managed to arrange such a commotion as in ‘The Resurrection of the Dead’ or ‘Behind the Cuckoo Sticks’… In life, truly, there is plenty of confusion, nonsense, wild coincidences, absurdities—and Lassila was a true poet of the most unbelievable nonsense,” Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko wrote.