“Recent Posts” ( Fin. Viimeiset viestit ) is a novel by the Finnish writer Hannu Luntial , released in Finland in early 2007 by Tammi.
| Last messages | |
|---|---|
| Viimeiset viestit | |
| Genre | sms novel |
| Author | Hannu Luntiala |
| Original language | Finnish |
| Date of first publication | 2007 |
| Publisher | Tammi |
In Russia, the book was published in March 2008 by the publishing house Azbuka in the translation of Maxim Fedorov (series “Separation Line”).
The work is the first of its kind SMS textbook, the text of which (with the exception of the preface) is completely composed of text messages. Prior to this, experiments in combining literature and cell phones were limited to sending novels via SMS.
Content
Book Plot
The top manager of the Finnish branch of Microsoft retires and decides to take a trip to the places where he spent his youth during the reckless time of the sexual revolution - Stockholm , Copenhagen , Amsterdam , Barcelona , Malaga ... However, it soon turns out that his path lies on the Middle (and then and the Far East) and that from the accounts of the Finnish “Microsoft” four million dollars have disappeared somewhere. A fascinating intrigue is revealed in the more than a thousand text messages that the main character exchanges with friends and former co-workers, his son and woman he loves, and partners in his mysterious new venture ...
Book structure
The novel is divided into 4 parts, which are divided into days. All messages for one day are collected in a separate chapter, which is named date. In total, the action of the book lasts about two months.
In fact, the work is a collection of messages received and sent from a single cell phone. The phone belongs to the main character named Teemu. Sms are arranged in chronological order in two columns. On the left - received by the hero, on the right - sent by him. Thus, the novel should not be read from left to right, but from top to bottom.
The appearance of the messages resembles the screens of old Nokia phones, where SMS was displayed four lines each, and when flipping, they moved not by one line, but showed the next part of the message.
Although when receiving a text message from a different time zone, the recipient sees the sender’s time, in the novel, all the time instructions are given in Finnish time to facilitate reading and placement in chronological order.
Based on the dates of sports matches and other events mentioned in the novel, it can be concluded that the action takes place in 2005.
Remarks
It was mentioned in the media that the messages in the novel are written according to the laws of the “ epistolary genre ” with their inherent abbreviations, but in fact there are few abbreviations in the text of SMS text.
In some Russian sources, the deed of the main character was described as downshifting , although in reality they have nothing in common.
The original version of the novel consists of messages in Finnish, Swedish and English, plus one in Spanish. However, none of the messages are not translated into Finnish. Probably, the author meant that the Finnish reader is fluent in English and Swedish (which is the second official language in Finland). In the Russian version, all these messages are translated in footnotes.
So far the book has been translated only into Russian. Estonian and German translations are being prepared for release.