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THE HELSINKI TRILOGY
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The Red Book of Farewells (Two Lines Press, 2023; Penguin Modern Classics, August 2026)
“A beautifully rendered portrait of a strikingly queer life—Saisio troubles any distinction we might try to draw between the personal and the political, the remembered and the invented.” —Morgan Thomas, author of Manywhere
“Pirkko Saisio is sheer innovation on the page. With Mia Spangenberg’s wonderful translation, Saisio so beautifully details the formation of a queer, radical life. A truly phenomenal story of sexual, political, and artistic awakening(s)—I loved this book of becoming.” —Mira Braneck, A Room of One’s Own (Madison, WI)
Lowest Common Denominator (Two Lines Press, 2024; Penguin Modern Classics, August 2025)
“A deeply felt work of unusual intelligence, Lowest Common Denominator is many things, but it refuses to be neatly categorized. As the narrator deals with grief over losing her father, she tries to reconcile the present reality of middle age with the fragmented memories she’s able to stitch together from childhood. A heady, surreal reading experience, full of linguistic magic that makes the world feel alive with possibility.”
—David Vogel, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)
Backlight (Two Lines Press, June 2025; Penguin Modern Classics, January 2026)
The fictional Pirkko Saisio, now a high school graduate, leaves her native Helsinki to find the love and recognition in faraway Switzerland that she was denied in the communist home of her childhood. But the small country in the heart of Europe turns out not to be the paradise she longs for, and away from home for the first time, she struggles to make sense of her suppressed queerness. In Backlight, the Finlandia Prize-winning author looks backward and inward, once again emerging, in Mia Spangenberg's sensitive translation, with an intimate portrait of a life lived in language.
“A beautifully rendered portrait of a strikingly queer life—Saisio troubles any distinction we might try to draw between the personal and the political, the remembered and the invented.” —Morgan Thomas, author of Manywhere
“Pirkko Saisio is sheer innovation on the page. With Mia Spangenberg’s wonderful translation, Saisio so beautifully details the formation of a queer, radical life. A truly phenomenal story of sexual, political, and artistic awakening(s)—I loved this book of becoming.” —Mira Braneck, A Room of One’s Own (Madison, WI)
Lowest Common Denominator (Two Lines Press, 2024; Penguin Modern Classics, August 2025)
“A deeply felt work of unusual intelligence, Lowest Common Denominator is many things, but it refuses to be neatly categorized. As the narrator deals with grief over losing her father, she tries to reconcile the present reality of middle age with the fragmented memories she’s able to stitch together from childhood. A heady, surreal reading experience, full of linguistic magic that makes the world feel alive with possibility.”
—David Vogel, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)
Backlight (Two Lines Press, June 2025; Penguin Modern Classics, January 2026)
The fictional Pirkko Saisio, now a high school graduate, leaves her native Helsinki to find the love and recognition in faraway Switzerland that she was denied in the communist home of her childhood. But the small country in the heart of Europe turns out not to be the paradise she longs for, and away from home for the first time, she struggles to make sense of her suppressed queerness. In Backlight, the Finlandia Prize-winning author looks backward and inward, once again emerging, in Mia Spangenberg's sensitive translation, with an intimate portrait of a life lived in language.