Behind the Matches
8 hrs. 7 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Maiju Lassila
Author
Maiju Lassila
Narrator
Stanislav Fedosov
Narrator
Stanislav Fedosov
Description
A classic of Finnish literature, Maiju Lassila, was actually called something else. This is one of the pseudonyms of the Finnish writer Agholt Untola (Tiietväinenen, 1868–1918), who happened to live in the era of change.
His humorous novella “With Matchsticks” is a masterpiece of Finnish ironic literature. It is well known to Russian readers in the translation by Mikhail Zoshchenko. In the late 1940s, the publisher stopped issuing the writer’s books, and he had to turn to translations to earn money.
“An excellent writer: concise, clever, mocking, exactly knowing what he wants… He loves confusion, chaos—so do I, even though I almost never managed to create such a commotion as in ‘Resurrected from the Dead’ or ‘With Matchsticks’… In real life, there truly is a lot of confusion, nonsense, wild coincidences, and meaninglessness, and Lassila was the true poet of the most unbelievable nonsense,” Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko wrote.
His humorous novella “With Matchsticks” is a masterpiece of Finnish ironic literature. It is well known to Russian readers in the translation by Mikhail Zoshchenko. In the late 1940s, the publisher stopped issuing the writer’s books, and he had to turn to translations to earn money.
“An excellent writer: concise, clever, mocking, exactly knowing what he wants… He loves confusion, chaos—so do I, even though I almost never managed to create such a commotion as in ‘Resurrected from the Dead’ or ‘With Matchsticks’… In real life, there truly is a lot of confusion, nonsense, wild coincidences, and meaninglessness, and Lassila was the true poet of the most unbelievable nonsense,” Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko wrote.
