Finnish Author Iida Turpeinen’s Award-Winning Novel Published in Turkish

Readers in Türkiye can now enjoy Iida Turpeinen’s mesmerizing novel Beasts of the Sea (Elolliset), newly available in Turkish as Denizin Canavarları. Winner of the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, shortlisted for Finland’s most prestigious literary honor, the Finlandia Prize, and nominated for Italy’s Premio Strega Europeo, the book has already been sold into translation rights in twenty-eight countries. When I began working on the translation of this award-winning novel, I knew I would also have to immerse myself in many new concepts from the natural sciences. The journey, which lasted about seven months, pushed me to grasp both the language and the story on a profound level.

Encountering Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea

We often come to know a book when it wins an award or when it is translated into many languages. Sometimes it reaches us through the words of a literary critic or simply through the eye of a fellow reader. My own introduction to Iida Turpeinen’s Beasts of the Sea (Elolliset) came in 2023, through an award-winning Finland-Swedish author, journalist, and cultural critic, Pia Ingström.

The novel opens with the line: “All expeditions begin with a cup of tea.” In my case, every literary conversation with Pia Ingström begins with either a Finnish coffee or a Turkish one. When we spoke about the book in 2023, the works of Hilda Olson (1832–1915), who appears in its pages, had not yet been exhibited at the  Ateneum Art Museum. We wondered when, and in what form, they might one day be revealed.

   

Beasts of the Sea: The Finnish-Turkish Translation Journey

That same year, at the Helsinki Book Fair, I had the chance to discuss Turpeinen’s novel with the Helsinki Literary Agency. This set in motion the search for a Turkish publisher. In 2024, the rights were acquired by Timaş Publishing, contracts were signed, and the translation process began.

Meanwhile, Hilda Olson’s works finally went on display at the Ateneum. I visited the exhibition with Pia Ingström, where we found ourselves face-to-face with the insects that populate both her paintings and Turpeinen’s narrative.

By September 2025, Beasts of the Sea reached its Turkish readers at last; a journey that began with coffee, conversation, and the quiet anticipation of discovery.

At the heart of the novel is Steller’s sea cow. This massive, quiet creature, which disappeared from history in the 18th century, was as much a miracle of nature as it was a species that vanished rapidly due to human carelessness and greed. Moving outward from the novel’s center, we encounter taxonomies and other species. Diplozoon paradoxum is one of them. While translating the relationship between Diplozoon paradoxum and Nordman, I found myself drawn into the characters’ world, sometimes recounting events from their perspective, at other times shaping the narrative as an external observer. The ambiguity not only made me reconsider which tenses (between past tense and reported past tense) to use, but it also turned the translation into a more creative process.

One of the moments that impressed me the most during the translation process was seeing the works of Finland’s first known professional female scientific illustrator, Hilda Olson (1832–1915), at the Ateneum Art Museum. She had drawn every detail of the insects, and the colors made them appear alive again. A magnifying glass was necessary to see these details. Hilda Olson’s name had not even been written when her works were exhibited during her own lifetime, and a century later, her works were included under her name in Ateneum’s Crossing Borders exhibition held between March and August 2025.

Both the works I encountered at the Ateneum and the Steller’s sea cow skeleton at the Natural History Museum of Helsinki allowed me to imagine the world of the novel in a more vivid and realistic way. These observations became a great source of inspiration for me while rendering the characters’ descriptions and the world of Steller’s sea cow into Turkish.

I also listened to Brahms’s Poco Allegretto countless times and even tried playing it on the flute; the music allowed me to draw closer to the emotional world of the characters. Every bone that remained of the sea cow resonated with the sorrow of a musical note. Death turned into a work of art in a museum, one that no one could take their eyes off.

When I examined versions of the novel translated into other languages, I noticed that in some translations certain words had been omitted altogether. This reminded me once again of how much attention to detail was required in bringing the text into Turkish.

For me, Beasts of the Sea (Denizin Canavarları in Turkish) was not only a translation experience. It was also a journey in search of a lost world, a witnessing of the marvels that lie in the depths of the sea, and an attempt to understand the complex bonds humans weave with nature. As the pages turn, the reader too will embark on this journey and bear witness to the silent yet powerful world of Steller’s sea cow. And in the end, the reader will have become the journey itself, joining the author in a chorus of gratitude to the species that have gone extinct.

Praise for the book:

Sebastian Guggolz, acquiring editor at S. Fischer Verlag,

“What a wonderful novel! I love the idea of telling the story of the expeditions in different times, and of the skeleton of Steller’s Sea cow holding all that together, connecting the centuries. I also loved the way Iida tells her story: it is so clever to do it with different individuals, linked to the Stellar’s sea cow, and focusing on female characters who are part or background. Iida has a beautiful style of writing, and the novel is also telling many things about science, in a very welcoming way for readers.”

“Beasts of the Sea is an incredibly fascinating, beautiful and, in fact, also very sad – as it discusses extinction – historical novel. It describes the hunger for science and the miracles of nature in a way that made me immediately amazed and curious. Writing in crystal clear and factual literary style, Turpeinen manages in very few and quick draws make her characters so deep that you get close to them. […] I suspect this is the biggest literary break-through in Finland in years.”