Lowest Common Denominator

Droll, sardonic... A piquant account of a childhood and a time... Saisio sketches a poignant, funny-sad picture of a communist family in Cold War Finland. In both substance and style, comparisons with Ali Smith may come to mind -- Boyd Tonkin * Spectator * Playful and profound, Lowest Common Denominator offers a captivating glimpse into twentieth-century Finland through the eyes of a charismatic child narrator. I loved it -- Fiona Mozley One of Finland's greatest living authors... Lowest Common Denominator, elegantly translated by Mia Spangenberg, is the first of her works to be published in English and the first in her Helsinki trilogy, which is in the peculiarly bleak Scandinavian tradition of autofiction * New Statesman * Like Annie Ernaux but funny -- Irène Bluche * rbbKultur * This is both family history and contemporary political history, sexual self-discovery and artist biography… moving and clever, funny and beautiful * NZZ am Sonntag, Best Books of the Century * If you love Deborah Levy, you'll adore Pirkko Saisio * Le Masque et la plume * Long an object of study in Finland, Saisio’s work is beginning to gain more global recognition now, cementing her place in the canon of autofiction that also includes the Nordic writers Karl Ove Knausgaard and Tove Ditlevsen -- Niina Pollari * Los Angeles Review of Books * Saisio gives us a humorous and empathetic account of the challenge of coming to terms with the world we are born into. It’s a world animated by the distances between generations, shimmering with the individuality of parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Sensual, curious, imaginative and funny, Saisio reminds us that being someone’s child can be a deeply queer experience -- Anna Poletti