Book details

Fair Play A novel by Tove Jansson
Translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal.

INTRODUCED BY ALI SMITH

“So what can happen when Tove Jansson turns her attention to her own favourite subjects, love and work, in this novel about two women, lifelong partners and friends? Expect something philosophically calm - and discreetly radical. Its publication is cause for huge celebration.” Ali Smith, from her introduction to Fair Play.

 

The writer and artist TOVE JANSSON (1914-2001) is best known as the creator of the Moomin stories, which have been published in thirty-five languages. However, from 1968, she turned her attention to writing for adults. Fair Play was her last novel, written when she was seventy-five. Sort of Books have also published Tove Jansson's classic The Summer Book (2003) and A Winter Book: Selected Stories (2006), which draws from five collections to present the best of her short fiction.

A charming, quietly radical and inspiring book, introduced by Ali Smith.
First ever publication in English, in a translation by Thomas Teal.

The writer and artist TOVE JANSSON (1914-2001) is best known as the creator of the Moomin stories, which have been published in thirty-five languages. However, from 1968, she turned her attention to writing for adults. Fair Play was her last novel, written when she was seventy-five. Sort of Books have also published Tove Jansson's classic The Summer Book (2003) and A Winter Book: Selected Stories (2006), which draws from five collections to present the best of her short fiction.

 

Thomas Teal has translated Tove Jansson's The Summer Book, Fair Play, for which he was awarded the Bernard Shaw Prize for translation from the Swedish for the years 2007-2009; The True Deceiver, winner of the Rochester Best Translated Book Award for 2011 and the forthcoming, Art in Nature.

 

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge, England. She is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like, Hotel World, Other Stories and Other Stories, and Girl Meets Boy. Her novel The Accidental was named the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and the 2006 Orange Prize.