Arto Paasilinna

I've been thinking about writing a post on Arto for a long time already. Arto Paasilinna is a Finn writer, unfortunately he's not really known here in Spain, I first came across him while reading a blog which I don't remember anymore whose was, the fact is that in that post there was a review on Arto's book "A Charming Mass Suicide" (Hurmaava joukkoitsemurha), the time passed and I never looked for it actively, but one day while reading a literary magazine my mum gets every two months that book was there and I decided to buy it. If you've never read Paasilinna you should be warned, he doesn't take seriously things like suicide and death, his books are not dark novels, they're just another insight to Finn society. As I was saying I got A Charming Mass Suicide after some days and I really liked the style, it was so different to everything else I'd read before that it made a big impression, surprisingly I laughed more than once understanding that you can actually find the funny side of almost everything and that it is good to laugh about ourselves. 
After A Charming Mass Suicide I had a Paasilinna-less period 'til I stumbled across The Howling Miller in a book shop, it was a pleasant surprise since I had long lost the hope of finding more of his books. The style was the same though the topic was different, but it is funny to see that what makes a person sane or insane is just the judgement of other people in some cases. 
This time I actually started looking for more of Arto's books, but the search was fruitless, it was really difficult to find anything, 'til I found "The Sweet Poison Cook" and "The Year Of The Hare", loved both of them though they are really different. After reading all these books I feel compelled to tell everyone to read them, they are a good read and they make you see things from a different angle. They you think. And this is good.