The Year of the Hare (novel)

The Year of the Hare (Finnish: Jäniksen vuosi) is a 1975 picaresque novel by Finnish author Arto Paasilinna. It tells the story of Kaarlo Vatanen, a frustrated journalist, who, after nearly killing a hare with his car, turns away from an unhappy and unwholesome life. On an impulse, Vatanen abruptly abandons his urban lifestyle, job, and wife, in exchange for the freedom of the road and the wilderness, living off his cash savings and casual employment, all the time accompanied by the hare which he has nursed back to health and kept as a pet. A year of unlikely encounters and adventures ensues, during the course of which Vatanen repeatedly runs afoul of the law and conventional mores but manages to stay afloat thanks to the help and understanding of other sympathetic free spirits.

The novel has been translated into 29 languages including English, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Rumanian, Russian, Swedish, Slovenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian. It is Paasilinna's most widely read work

Notes

References

• Arto Paasilinna, Herbert Lomas (tr.). The Year of the Hare.
  ISBN 978-0-7206-1277-6
  (2006, 6th ed.)

• The Year of the Hare at The New York Times
• The Year of the Hare at World Literature Today (via Article Archives, JavaScript required)
• The Year of the Hare at
  complete review
• The Year of the Hare at The Literary Traveller