Riku Kauhanen: The Ghost Soldiers March in Four Rows Towards the East, a Woodpecker that Has Flown Into the Yard, a Blood-Stained Sky and Other Omens of War

“When I was young, they said that there would be war and famine when people’s bread was fed to animals.” This is what the old Tuomas Salenius said in Mika Waltari’s Burning Youth (1935) as the townspeople fed dry loaves of bread to the sheep in the farmhouse. Bread was considered sacred, especially among those who had witnessed the famine years. The book also shines with a dark foreboding of the whole of Europe in the grip of destruction.