Lowest Common Denominator

For readers of Tove Jansson and Eileen Myles, Lowest Common Denominator is an ecstatic coming-of-age novel by the Finlandia-prize-winning author of The Red Book of Farewells

Writing in the wake of her father’s death, the narrator of Pirkko Saisio’s autofictional novel (translated from Finnish by Mia Spangenberg) transports us to the 1950s Finland of her youth, where she navigates life as an only child of communist parents. Convinced she will grow up to become a man, a young Saisio keeps trying and failing to meet the expectations of the adults around her. Writing with her trademark wit and style, each formative experience--with the Big Bad Wolf, a bikini-clad circus announcer, and Jesus Christ ＂who has a beard like a man but a skirt and long hair like a woman＂--drives her further and further from her family and others. Struggling to understand her place in the world around her, it’s in language that she discovers a refuge and a way to be seen at last.

Pirkko Saisio (b. 1949) studied drama and completed her actor’s training in 1975. Her debut novel The Course of Life (Elämänmeno, 1975) won the J. H. Erkko Award. Saisio has been nominated for the Finlandia Prize seven times, winning it in with The Red Book of Farewells (Punainen erokirja, 2003). She has, among other awards, received Aleksis Kivi Prize and State Literature Award. Apart from novels, she has written numerous plays and scripts for film and television and is a well-known theatre director.

Mia Spangenberg translates from Finnish, Swedish, and German into English. Her work has been published in Finland and the UK, and appeared in journals such as LitHub and Asymptote. She holds a Ph.D. in Scandinavian studies from the University of Washington, Seattle, where she resides with her family.