Wow! eBook
Fair Play: Tove Jansson Main Edition
Author(s): Tove Jansson (Author), Ali Smith (Introduction), Thomas Teal (Translator)
- Publisher: Sort Of Books
- Publication Date: 7 Jun. 2007
- Edition: Main
- Language: English
- Print length: 152 pages
- ISBN-10: 0954899539
- ISBN-13: 9780954899530
Book Description
What mattered most to Tove Jansson, she explained in her eighties, was work and love, a sentiment she echoes in this tender and original novel. Translated for the first time into English, Fair Play portrays a love between two older women, a writer and artist, as they work side-by-side in their Helsinki studios, travel together and share summers on a remote island. In the generosity and respect they show each other and the many small shifts they make to accommodate each other’s creativity we are shown a relationship both heartening and truly progressive. “so what can happen when Tove Jansson turns her attention to her own favourite subjects, love and work, in the form of this novel about two women, lifelong partners and friends? Expect something philosophically calm – and discreetly radical. At first sight it looks autobiographical. Like everything Jansson wrote, it’s much more than it seems . . .Fair Play is very fine art . ” (Ali Smith from the introduction to Fair Play) Praise for A Winter Book‘Another charming, treasurable book by the author of the Mooomin stories…simple and light in style, yet somehow profound.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘The Winter Book is a magical read and will become a faithful friend’ The Scotsman‘We should be grateful that Jansson’s work is back in print.’ The Observer ‘Quietly beautiful and elegantly precise’ Daily Mail
Editorial Reviews
Review
I absolutely loved FAIR PLAY. Tove Jansson has that magical gift of communicating directly with her reader through seemingly effortless prose. Writing of this calibre is a rare thing, to be treasured. — Philip Ardagh
A book about love – tender, eccentric and fiercely independent. It feels a privilege to read it. — Esther Freud
Jansson’s prose is wondrous: it is clean, deliberate; an aesthetic so certain of itself it’s breathtaking. ―
Daily TelegraphAbout the Author
The writer and artist Tove Jansson is best known as the creator of the Moomin stories, which have been published in thirty-five languages. Fair Play, written when she was 75 years old, was one of ten novels that she wrote for adults. This is the first time it has been published in English.
