The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna

A comedy fable about one man's journey into the wilderness with a hare up his jumper

The Year of the Hare begins with the moment journalist Kaarlo Vatanen finds his life knocked off course by a young hare. As his car swerves to avoid the leveret on a quiet country road Vatanen is concerned that he has injured the animal and can't help himself stopping to find out.

Like Alice's White Rabbit the hare leads Vatanen on a picaresque adventure miles away from his structured professional life. The hare asks for little other than a ready supply of fresh leaves and protection from the oven, after all hare is skinned and eaten in rural Finland,  yet he offers Vatanen a mirror with which to view his own life.

The hare is a brilliant device which Paasilinna uses to create pace and to introduce new characters that drive the narrative on through various misadventures culminating in a chase over the border into the Soviet Union. The characters the pair meet along the way each in some way challenge Vatanen's perspective of the pretence that was the life he left behind.

The cover art on this new paperback edition perfectly captures the spirit of the novel. Though originally published in 1975 the story is a fresh as a daisy. The preface explains that the translation was slightly tweaked for the 7th edition in 2006 but at heart the structure and humour of the text remains unchanged. The novel has already been translated into 18 languages and appeared on the best-seller list at home in Finland and in France where a film adaptation was also produced.

This is the only book you'll read this year about one man's journey into the wilderness with a hare up his jumper. 

The  Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna and translated by Herbert Lomas published by Peter Owen, 144 pages