Ali Smith thanks: my friend Kathleen Bryson who, several years ago, looked at me in wide eyed amazement when I said I’d never read anything by Tove Jansson, immediately took me downstairs to the children’s department in a bookshop on Charing Cross Road, bought me Moominsummer Madness, told me about The Summer Book (which had been out of print for decades and proved very hard to find) and also about “a beautiful novel Jansson wrote about two women artists who live and work together”, which she’d read in its original Swedish some years before.
Sort of Books thanks: Sophia Jansson, Helen Svensson of Schildts, Ali Smith, Kathleen Bryson and Thomas Teal; Peter Dyer, Henry Iles, Miranda Davies and Tim Chester for production; and Holly Marriott and Jason Craig at Penguin.
FILI (Finnish Literature Information Centre) has supported the translation of this book.