©Marek Sabogal

Iida Rauma: Destruction

A case study of an individual who was nearly destroyed and all that is being destroyed right now.

Destruction is about bullying and the violent and long-lasting effects it has on children growing up with fear. While jogging at night, A sees a familiar figure at the city’s desolate fringes and realizes nothing ends, nothing is over. So begins a breathless, desperate attempt to hunt down and escape the past across the ravaged city of Turku, into the water-damaged classrooms of the 1990s and a darkness for which there are no words but still must be expressed. A cruel, precise and breathless description of many years of oppression, psychological trauma and even outright physical violence.

Original title: Hävitys. Siltala 2021, 370 pp.
Foreign rights: Helsinki Literary Agency, helsinkiagency.fi