Cover of Popular Music from Vittula

Popular Music from Vittula

Literary FictionHumor & Satire

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About “Popular Music from Vittula”

This is a novel by Mikael Niemi, first published in Sweden in 2000. An English translation by Laurie Thompson followed in 2003, and a film based on the book was released in 2004. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)

Praise for “Popular Music from Vittula”

“Niemi’s entrancing debut novel is a coming-of-age story set in Pajala, Sweden, a remote district above the Arctic Circle. It is the early 1960’s, and Matti and his peculiar sidekick, Niila, are fascinated by their exotic corner of the world as by their newest discoveries: girls and rock music.”

— New York Times Book Review

“Niemi’s finest achievement is to have created a world poised between an adult’s fantastic memories of childhood and a child’s naive dreams of his future.”

— Los Angeles Times Book Review

“It’s safe to say that contemporary Finnish fiction is pretty much unknown in North America, but Mikael Niemi’s tale, a runaway bestseller in Scandinavia, should go some way toward changing that...This “playful, rueful, and wondrous” novel with a magic realist touch is also funny and moving.”

— The Globe and Mail: The Globe 100 (Canada)

Book details

Published
2004
Latest edition
2004 · ISBN 9781583226599
ISBN
9781583226599

Frequently asked questions

How many pages is Popular Music from Vittula?

Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi has 237 pages.

Some summaries adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Book descriptions, author biographies, award records and review quotes on this page are courtesy of Penguin Random House.