The Beggar & the Hare A Novel

In the vein of Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Hundred Year Old Man, a hugely entertaining satirical tale, at once humorous and profound, about a Romanian beggar living on the streets of Helsinki.

A modern-day rewriting of the popular Finish parable "The Year of the Hare" by Arto Paasilinna

Vatanescu, a young Romanian construction worker, desires two things: a future for himself and a pair of football boots for his son. So off he goes to a cold, dark country to beg.

Despite reading about Finland in the novels of Arto Paasilinna, Vatanescu has no idea what he is in for, and soon he is living on the streets of Helsinki, throwing feasts from the contents of a dumpster with his fellow beggars. Little does he realize, however, that his employer is about to ruin his bacchanal, and much, much more…

As Vatanescu flees from international crime organizations as well as the Finnish police, he finds an unlikely companion: a hare who has been sentenced to death for living within Helsinki’s city limits. Together, Vatanescu and his new fellow fugitive set on a journey from Lapland to the National Idea Park construction site, to the upper echelons of Finnish politics.

Known for his satirical humor and picaresque style, Tuomas Kyro offers an unusual tale in the vein of Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man and Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. At once humorous and deeply moving, The Beggar and the Hare is a modern tour de force.

Tuomas Kyrö is one of the new voices in Finnish literature whose authorial talents were first showcased in his debut novel, Leather Jacket. Kyrö draws on the long traditions of Finnish prose to tell compelling, even tragic stories with great authority. He is also a prolific cartoonist and columnist and appears weekly on a satirical news programme in Finland.