THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

HENRIK TIKKANEN

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
1987

By turns ironic and uproarious, The Thirty Years' War is about a soldier who carried on World War II by himself, years after it officially ended. In satirizing war and the making of a war hero, the controversial Finnish-Swedish writer Henrik Tikkanen gives many a nod to American culture and the American military. His comic novel, reminiscent of the best writing of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is now available in English, ten years after its original publication in Finland.

At the onset of World War II, Viktor Kappara, the son of a fisherman and a maid who once worked for J. P. Morgan, is sent to guard a remote outpost on the Finno-Russian front. Late in the war, Viktor is ordered to stay there until his sergeant returns with a supply of booze. Peace is declared, the sergeant never returns, and Viktor stays put. An order is an order. During his years of isolation, Viktor writes but does not mail letters that describe his misadventures with a country couple, a sheriff, and a radical journalist, who tries to convince Viktor that the war is over. Loyalty like Viktor's is too idealistic and sublime for the complicated contemporary world of half-truths, and eventually he must defend himself as the entire Finnish army stages a televised attack on his outpost.
In passing, Tikkanen takes swipes at the Great Powers, the radicals, the conservatives, Finland's "real-politik," and militarism. But the centre of the book is Viktor himself, naive and touching, bull-headed yet likeable.

The twenty drawings are by Tikkanen, a noted artist and caricaturist as well as author. The Thirty Years' War was translated into English by George and Lone Thygesen Blecher, who were named Translators of the Year in 1984 by the American Library Association. George C. Schoolfield, who provided the afterword, is chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages at Yale University and an authority on Scandinavian literature.

22 x 13 cm. 158 pp.

Very good condition, dust jacket worn along the top edge, book itself clean and tidy.