Reading Around Tove: The Winter Warriors

A reflection on Olivier Norek’s historical novel and the wartime Finland that shaped Tove Jansson “War often takes us by surprise, and there has to be a first death on our land for us to truly believe in it.” – Olivier Norek (July 2025) This isn’t the sort of story I would normally choose to read before drifting off to sleep at night. Planet Paula is a humdrumish sort of place, with creaking TBR piles as far as the eye can see and ‘too many books, not enough bloody time’1 in the day to go out looking for a fight, so this is one book that certainly wouldn’t have ambushed me on my way through the library. Not that I’m especially averse to military‑themed historical novels, but there are titles enough on my shelves already jostling for attention. Nevertheless, since commencing Reading Around Tove as part of my ongoing Tove Trove project, I have begun diving into a diverse (for me) assortment of literature – fiction, non‑fiction, poetry, journals, newspapers, you name it – on subjects and…