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While the masses may be titillated by reading Fifty Shades of Grey, do others find similar release in Oksanen's Purge? Despite the differences between entertainment and enlightenment, perhaps the line between low and high culture is more porous than we thought.
You have to imagine the scene. It was the fall of 2010 at the Berlin International Literature Festival. SofiOksanen's 2008 novel Puhdistus (Eng. Purge, 2010) had recently been translated into thirty-something languages, and Oksanen was now enjoying her time in the festival circuit limelight. At around 8 p.m. on what was probably a Tuesday evening, fifty or so of us-part chatterati, part precariat-shuffled into one of the smaller halls of the imposing Haus der Kulturen der Welt. As the lights went down, a spotlight shone on a guitar player who began plucking out the kind of neoclassical, neofolk instrumental that might have been from anywhere. The song stopped as abruptly as it had started, and in an uneasy transition, Oksanen and the moderator took the stage. The gothic Oksanen-face powdered ghostly white, jet-black dreadlocks with purple highlights (or were they pink?)-cut a suitably theatrical figure; proof perfect that a distinctive authorial persona is of considerable help on one's ascent to literary stardom.1
As will become apparent, the festivalization or showbiz of literature is not a bad departure point for considering the body politics of Oksanen's Purge. Indeed, several moderator-type details bear repeating here: that Oksanen was born in Finland in 1977 to a Finnish father and an Estonian mother; that following studies in literature and drama, she made her writerly debut in 2003 with the novel Stalinin lehmät (Stalin's cows), followed by Baby Jane in 2005, two novels skirting close to Oksanen's own biography and treating subjects such as eating disorders, lesbian relationships, and the image of Estonian women in Finland; that as a self-identified bisexual, Oksanen has been honored for her advocacy work on behalf of queer communities in the Baltic states; that Oksanen occupies a prominent place in Finnish public life, a frequent columnist and talk-show guest.
Oksanen's third novel, Purge, began life as a play, her first, premiering to excellent reviews at the Finnish National Theater in Helsinki in 2007. On publication as a novel, it became a literary sensation...