Essays on Desire and Doubt / Halun ja epäluulon esseet

Essays on Desire and Doubt Cover
Essays on Desire and Doubt Cover
Essays on Desire and Doubt by Antti Nylén
Author Antti Nylén
Antti Nylén

From the Burning Bridge Literary Agency:

Antti Nylén (s.1973) is an essayist and translator specializing in 19th century French literature.  He has translated Baudelaire, Flaubert and J.K. Huysmans, among others. Nylén is a feminist, a devout Catholic, a vegan, a dandy, a father of two, and an exceptionally violent writer. He lives in Helsinki.

His first book, Vihan ja katkeruuden esseet (Essays on Anger and Bitterness, Savukeidas 2007) won the Kalevi Jäntti Prize for Literature in 2007 and was nominated for the Helsingin Sanomat Best Debut Book Award. In this polemical essay collection, Nylén writes about neckties, sex, crazy bitches, meat, pop, and God.

Antti Nylén’s second essay collection, Halun ja epäluulon esseet (Essays on Desire and Doubt, Savukeidas 2010) examines Nico, Morrissey, the possibility of being saved, buttocks, Robert Bresson, strange sensuality, religion and irreligiosity. The book received rave reviews and was nominated for the Runeberg Prize for Literature for 2010.

“Desire is pleasure in and of itself; need is a state of deprivation and distress.”

“Doubt is not-belief. Nonetheless, it is not a knowing. Doubt is a synonym for faith.”

Read the essay “On the Possiblity of Salvation” at Burning Bridge


About Essays on Desire and Doubt:

Antti Nylén’s second essay collection, Essays on Desire and Doubt, examines Nico, Morrissey, the possibility of being saved, buttocks, Robert Bresson, strange sensuality, religion and irreligiosity. These freely-meandering essays are often obstinate and always emotional.

“I hope that everyone who reads the book will become a vegetarian. And if ever before they’ve been hostile to Christianity, that they will think two friendly thoughts about it, about Jesus and the church,” Nylén has said in an interview (Uusimaa 17.1.2011).

Essays on Desire and Doubt received rave reviews and was nominated for the Runeberg Prize for Literature for 2010.

“Desire is pleasure in and of itself; need is a state of deprivation and distress.”

“Suspicion is not-belief. Nonetheless, it is not a knowing. Suspicion is a synonym for faith.”

Original title: Halun ja epäluulon esseet
Publisher: Savukeidas 2010, 393 pages
Cover design: Antti Eerikäinen

Even though this will not please everyone, after Antti Nylén’s second collection, Essays on Desire and Doubt, we are forced to admit that the young essayists at Savukeidas are writing the most interesting, intellectually challenging, sociophilosophically insightful literature being produced in Finland today
– Matti Mäkelä, Helsingin Sanomat newspaper

Even though Nylén shuns the irony characteristic of contemporary prose, his sentences exude laconic flair and black humor.
– Jussi Kaskinen, Etelä-Saimaa newspaper

The best thing in Nylén’s essays is that you can appreciate them even if you don’t agree with him. Books that make you want to fling them against the wall don’t come along very often.
– Marja Honkonen, Jyväskylän Ylioppilaslehti college newspaper

In recent decades the Finnish literature have been keeping their distance from Christianity. — – As a result, Essays on Desire and Doubt, by the versatile man of letters Antti Nylén, feels like the inauguration of a new epoch.
– Esko Miettinen, Sana Christian magazine

The power [of the essays] is in the ideas, in Nylén’s way of thinking differently than what we are used to. Essays offer something invigorating, comforting. They are invigorating. It isn’t true that there is nothing new under the sun. There is here.
– Lauri Linna, Scriptor