Not Before Sundown

Johanna Sinisalo

Translated from the Finnish by Herbert Lomas, this is an international fantasy best-seller (published in America as Troll) and winner of the Finlandia Prize. Mikael, a young gay photographer, finds in the courtyard of his apartment block a small, man-like creature. It is a young troll, known from Scandinavian mythology as a demonic wild beast, a hybrid like the werewolf. Supposedly extinct, today it is regarded as a hairy, cuddly toy by Nordic children. Mikael gives the troll a name, Pessi, and takes him home and hides him. The first thing Mikael does is research everything he can about trolls from the internet, from folklore, nature journals and newspaper cuttings. What Mikael does not discover is that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for an ultra-hip brand of jeans, Mikael finds himself fast-tracked into a dangerous liaison with Martes, the sexually ambivalent art director of the advertising agency concerned, while a couple of his friends in turn fall in love with him because he carries the troll's scent. What Mikael fails above all to learn, with tragic consequences, is that Pessi the troll is the interpreter of man's darkest, most forbidden impulses.

'A sharp, resonant, prickly book that exists on the slipstream of SF, fantasy, horror and gay fiction.' --Neil Gaiman

'A punk version of The Hobbit' -- USA Today

'Chillingly seductive.' -- Independent, Best Reads of 2003

JOHANNA SINISALO studied comparative literature and drama, amongst other subjects, at the University of Tampere. Professionally she worked in the advertising business, rising to the level of marketing designer.
An important figure in the Finnish science fiction scene in the late 1980s and early '90s (winning a rare back-to-back collection of Atorox prizes for short fiction in the genre), she was also the first to make a breakthrough by bursting the genre barriers.
Sinisalo was awarded the Finlandia Prize for literature in 2000 for her first novel, Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi (translated as Not before sundown in 2003 and again as Troll — A Love Story in 2004 for the American market