Finnish Lapland, 1944: a young soldier is called to work as an interpreter at a Nazi prison camp. Surrounded by cruelty and death, he struggles to hold onto his humanity. When peace comes, the crimes are buried beneath the snow and ice. A few years later, journalist Inkeri is assigned to investigate the rapid development of remote Western Lapland. Her real motivation is more personal: she is following a lead on her husband, who disappeared during the war. Finding a small community riven with tension and suspicious of outsiders, Inkeri slowly begins to uncover traces of disturbing facts that were never supposed to come to light. From this starkly beautiful polar landscape emerges a story of silenced histories and ongoing oppression, of human brutality and survival.

"Reveals so much more about a war we thought we knew that it feels like a potted epic" - Guardian

"Evocative... an amalgam of detective story and history, which absorbs the reader from start to finish" - TLS

"A beautifully written novel and a thriller that will keep readers turning the page to find out the truth about this disgraceful chapter of Finnish history" - Harvard Review

"A strong, intense thriller plot... depicts the controversial landscape of 1940s Lapland ambitiously and beautifully" - Helsingin Sanomat

"Beautiful... a chapter in history that has rarely been visible in fiction... Rautiainen succeeds in describing the history of Finland's colonization and also gives a voice to the Sámi" - Loostâš

"Stuns its readers with details of the events and conditions at the prison camps... A delicate and artfully composed story of painful, obscure and dangerous events in recent history; events which have been silenced up until now" - Lapin Kansa