Leena Krun

Leena Krohn is a Finnish writer and the author of numerous novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. In her books, she consistently writes about a person’s relationship with themselves and the surrounding world, about morality, about the boundaries between reality and fantasy, and about issues such as artificial intelligence. As early as the mid-1990s, Krohn began using the Internet—her novella “Sphinx, or Robot” was first published precisely on the Web. Leena Krohn’s novels most often take the form of collections of novellas united by a central character or setting. The author calls these novellas miniatures. In “Tainaron” (1985), the narrative is told by a narrator who sends letters to an unknown recipient. They describe the strange world in which he now lives, where the inhabitants around him are something between insects and humans. In “Umbra” (1990), the central character is a doctor who encounters various amazing cases in his practice: for example, he meets a real Don Juan or is invited to a state organized in such a way that its citizens cannot attain happiness in life. In “Pereat Mundus,” Leena Krohn gathered her own variations on the theme of the end of the world. In “Datura” (2011), the miniatures are organized around a central character: a journalist who works for a revue devoted to paranormal phenomena. The book’s heroine, while carrying out professional assignments, meets various eccentrics: in this novel, as in others, there are many imaginary events that are difficult to imagine in reality. At the center of Krohn’s work are philosophical issues such as the nature of reality and time, and the problem of perception. Thus, in the collection of miniatures “The Artificial Window,” the main character herself is a philosopher who spends her days swimming in a pool and giving philosophical consultations. Talking with her many clients, the philosopher discusses, among other things, various mysteries of metaphysics. Among her clients are a man gradually turning into a tree, a woman who claims to see the dead, as well as a mysterious serial killer. The novel in novellas “Donna Quixote and the Other Townspeople,” like many other works by Krohn, is written in a poetic manner that some critics have found somewhat dark.