Veijo Meri is regarded as one of the most important modern writers of Finland.
He was born in 1928 in Viipuri (Vyborg) and began his literary career with short stories, which attracted significant attention in Finnish literary circles in the mid-1950s.
In 1957, his first novel, Manila Rope, was published, bringing him recognition beyond Finland’s borders. In 1960, The Events of 1918 appeared, followed by numerous short stories, plays, novels, essays, and other works.
An original writer in both conception and style, with strong surreal and grotesque elements, Veijo Meri often takes war as a central theme in order to reveal the deeper absurd and contradictory nature of human experience.
