Tímakistan (The Casket of Time) is nominated for Tähtifantasia (”Star Fantasy”), the award for best translated fantasy novel in Finland. This year’s line-up includes according to the jury, five books with quite a different view of what fantasy is. Here are the other books:
- David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks
- Eka Kurniawan: Beauty Is a Wound
- Ursula K. Le Guin: The Beginning Place / Threshold
- Brandon Sanderson: Mistborn : The Final Empire
or with the Finnish titles:
- Eka Kurniawan: Kauneus on kirous
- Ursula K. Le Guin: Ikuisen hämärän maa
- Andri Snær Magnason: Aika-arkku
- David Mitchell: Luukellot
- Brandon Sanderson: Viimeinen valtakunta
Tímakistan won the Icelandic literary Prize and has now been published in quite a few languages. In Japan, Denmark, Brazil, Greece, Hungary, Italy, China and Taiwan. The English version will be published by Restless Books in New York.
The Casket of Time:
When things are looking bad and the world seems to be trembling Sigrun’s family is lucky – the can crawl into their magical black TimeBoxes® and wait for better times. But one day, Sigrún’s box opens and she is confronted by an abandoned city in ruins, with everyone still in their black boxes waiting for things to get better.
Sigrun meets an old lady in a house full of old strange things. The old lady tells them a story of a Dímon, a greedy king who conquered the world but yearned to conquer time. He grieved that his greatest treasure, Princess Obsidiana would grow old and die like any other common person. With a magical casket, transparent like glass but woven from spidersilk, with such a dense weave that even time cannot penetrate the walls, the king can spare his beautiful princess the ugly days, the dark days, the rainy days, the normal days and the worthless days. One day a small boy opens the casket and the princess discovers that 20 years have passed, the kingdom is crumbling and the king has gone mad and he does not mean to open the casket until everything is perfect again.
There seems to be a connexion between the old woman’s story and Sigrun’s world. She and her friends must find the link, which will hopefully show them how to fix the world.
https://www.kirjavinkit.fi/uutiset/vuoden-2018-tahtifantasia-ehdokkaat-julkistettu/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter