Notes from an Island

“If you never see me again in life after this book is published, it is because I left to find an island of my own at last.” ―Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Tove Jansson was a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry.” —Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials

In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson—author of the iconic novel The Summer Book and the beloved Moomin series—built a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. For thirty years, Tove and her beloved partner, Tuulikki “Tooti” Pietilä, lived, painted, and wrote, energized by flora, fauna, the shifting seascapes, and solitude and shifting seascapes. Jansson’s spare, quirky prose, and Tooti's subtle artwork combine to form a work of meditative beauty. Notes from an Island is both a beautiful chronicle of a rugged ecology and an intimate collaboration between to artists in love with each other—and the island itself. This edition also includes Jansson’s essay The Island, described by Pulitzer Prize finalist Hernan Diaz as “…a short story, an essay, and a prose poem ... the text seems to change following mysterious tides from a timeless present to an urgent past.”
 
Praise for Tove Jansson’s Work
"It could be said that everything she wrote is, in one way or another, about the creative interactions between art and reality or art and nature." —The Guardian

“It’s hard to describe the astonishing achievement of Jansson’s artistry.”—Ali Smith, author of Gliff and How to Be Both

"Her style is not at all 'poetic'—quite the contrary. It is prose of the very highest order; it is pure prose. Through its quiet clarity we see unreachable depths, threatening darkness, promised treasures."—Ursula K. LeGuin, The Guardian
 

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) was born in Helsinki into Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority; her father was a sculptor and her mother a graphic designer and illustrator. Jansson’s most famous creation is Moomintroll, a hippopotamus-like character with a dreamy disposition who stars in Moomin, the long-running comic strip and series of books for children that have been translated throughout the world, inspiring films, several television series, an opera, and theme parks in Finland and Japan. Jansson wrote eleven novels and short-story collections for adults, including The Summer Book, The True Deceiver, Fair Play, and The Woman Who Borrowed Memories and is widely beloved as a leading voice in contemporary global literature. In 1994 she was awarded the Prize of the Swedish Academy.