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The Colonel’s Wife<\/strong><\/em> by Rosa Liksom, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers (Graywolf Press)<\/strong><\/p>\n BookMarks Reviews: Five total\u2014Four Positive, One Mixed<\/p>\n Awards: None<\/p>\n Number of Finnish Works of Fiction Published in Translation from 2008-2019: 65 (5.42\/year)<\/p>\n Number of Those Translations Written by Women: 40 of the books were authored by women, 21 were translated by women.<\/p>\n Other Translations of Liksom\u2019s Work: Dark Paradise <\/em>(2006), Compartment No. 6 <\/em>(2016), One Night Stands <\/em>(1993)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Synopsis<\/strong><\/p>\n At the end of her life, an unrepentant member of the White Guard and Nazi Party\u2014the Colonel\u2019s wife of the title\u2014reflects on her life with unadulterated honesty, providing a very complicated picture of life in Finland in the time around World War II. She recounts her father\u2019s involvement with the Colonel, and how he became a major presence in her life when she was a mere four years old. After the passing of her father, he takes over that role, until she\u2019s old enough for him to marry.<\/p>\n A horrific monster of a man, the Colonel is dedicated to the Nazi Party and the purity of Finland, helping bring his young wife\u2014who eventually is in charge of the \u201cprison camps\u201d in Finland\u2014into the fold. He rapes, beats his wife, kills their unborn child. Yet, she remains loyal to him for far too long before escaping . . . To a remote village where she immediately seduces a fourteen-year-old boy and makes him her husband.<\/p>\n This novel is morally complicated, with a main character who is by turns sympathetic (she is abused by a system she\u2019s not even aware of), charming (the joy with which she helps her young, second husband find an age-appropriate wife), and a monster (\u201cMy father made me a daughter of the White Guard. The Colonel made me a Nazi. And I\u2019m not ashamed of either one.<\/em>\u201d).<\/p>\n Structured with a frame story depicting the day of her death, the book progresses in mostly chronological order, as if written by the Colonel\u2019s Wife herself. The prose is direct, with a hint of ruralness to it, reflected in the grammatical errors and her admissions to neither being educated nor well-read\u2014despite becoming a successful novelist in her later years. The voice is both earnest\u2014even when dealing with the \u201cevil\u201d things she did\u2014and textured with idiomatic phrases and word choices.<\/p>\n There are a number of historical references in here that might require some research and\/or explanation for those of us unfamiliar with Finland\u2019s role in World War II. The three wars that they fought in around this time\u2014the Winter War (Finland vs. Russia just before WWII), Continuation War (Finland + German Nazis vs. Russia during WWII), and the Lapland War (Russia + Finland vs. Germans in Lapland following WWII)\u2014are unlikely to be part of most high school world history textbooks. But for a country geographically stuck between two warring ideologies\u2014Fascism and Communism\u2014they were a valuable territory, and one that didn\u2019t always pick a lane.<\/p>\n The novel resonates in 2020 as nationalism is back on the rise\u2014and at odds with a twenty-first century version of \u201csocialism\u201d\u2014and many of the socio-cultural structures that molded the Colonel\u2019s Wife are still in place. (Namely, The Patriarchy.) It can also be read as a rebuke of \u201ccancel culture\u201d by articulating the gray space within which the Colonel\u2019s Wife resides.<\/p>\n For this book to have its intended impact though, it needs to be read in full and <\/em>reflected upon. Anyone immediately repulsed by the idea of a Nazi main character is unlikely to get past the first third, and the fact that she goes from being extremely sympathetic when she finally escapes her abusive husband into being a pedophile is . . . off-putting to some. The narrative tricks used to make this compelling and the ways in which Liksom plays with the impact of history on a singular human is impressive and startling.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Class Reaction<\/strong><\/p>\n Generally positive. Uncomfortable in the sense that they really felt for the main character but couldn\u2019t explain why or how that happened. And they all loved talking to Lola.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Origin story<\/strong><\/p>\n Chad W. Post: I think a good place to start would be if you told us how you got into translating, and how your career has developed over the past few years.<\/p>\n Lola Rogers: Well, I actually got interested in Finnish language when I majored in linguistics. That’s how I became interested in the language<\/em>\u2014not knowing very much about the culture. I just found the language itself interesting. The grammatical system. I had studied Spanish for many years and as a linguistics major we were required to study a language outside of our native language family. And Finnish isn\u2019t an Indo-European language. So that was one of the options and I was already interested in the language, so I went for it. And then, of course, as soon as I started studying it I realized that it was going to take me years<\/em> to learn, you know, like ten times as long as it took me to learn Spanish. But I ended up studying it! Well, I mean I’m still studying it after twenty years. So I did that, studying the language off and on, both at the university and on my own. And eventually started just translating kind of for fun. For instance, I had, like, bands I really liked and would translate the lyrics for my friends, things like that.<\/p>\n CWP: I want to assume these were Finnish death metal lyrics?<\/p>\n LR: No . . . Actually, I\u2019m into Finnish folk metal. Sort of neo folk metal. Anyway, at the time there wasn\u2019t an official translation program at the University of Washington where I studied. Which was kind of good actually because I ended up designing what I wanted to do and was able to sort of craft my own master’s degree. Afterwards, I went to Finland, to work as a translation intern at the Finnish Literature Exchange, also known as FILI, which is a part of the Ministry of Education and Culture. I was there for seven months and the best thing was meeting almost all of the publishers and literary agents in Finland at the time. So yeah. At that time, there was a real shortage of Finnish translators. That’s why FILI was so active in training them. So to my great surprise, as soon as I graduated, I had so much work that I’ve worked as a translator full-time ever since.<\/p>\n CWP: Wow. That’s amazing. What was the first book you translated?<\/p>\n