The right word. That's all the difference between life and death. Memory is inseparable fromwords. Words draw things out of the shadows. Learn the words and you will recover yourmemory.
One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. Withnothing to identify him, and having lost his memory and language, he is a mystery to the crew ofthe German ship that rescues him. The ship's doctor, a Finn, identifies the name embroidered onthe man's jacket as Finnish. Taking him for a fellow countryman, he gradually teaches him tospeak Finnish and eventually finds him a berth in an army hospital in Helsinki, from where he maybe able to piece together his former life.
But the longer he spends in Helsinki, the less he feels at home; the more he learns of the Finnishlanguage and rich history, the less familiar it seems; and by the time we learn his true identity, it'stoo late.
New Finnish Grammar is an unforgettable tale of one man's search for meaning and for identityamid the devastation of WW2.