Sofi Oksanen's 'Purge' Wins Fnac Prize
The Finnish author's novel, Purge, has won the Fnac prize in France. This is the first time the award has gone to a foreigner, according to ERR's radio news.
Oksanen said she felt the award would help spread Finnish literature throughout the world. Fnac is a French chain of bookstores with locations in eight countries.
Purge was selected from 300 works published in France in the past year. The decision to award the prize to Oksanen was made before the novel began attracting positive reviews from French critics.
Oksanen's novel has also won the prestigious Finlandia prize in her home country. Purge, mostly set in Estonia, is based in part on stories from Oksanen's family that are connected to events in Estonian and Finnish history during the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1990s. Of Oksanen's three novels, Purge is the only one to have been translated to English.
