A delightfully witty and mordant modern classic from Finland: the story of a journalist who befriends an injured hare and embarks into the Finnish wilderness Kaarlo Vatanen is fed up with his life. He's sick of his job, his wife, his urban lifestyle in Helsinki. But all this changes one warm summer's evening, when he encounters an injured hare on a deserted country road. On an impulse he can't fully explain, Vatanen abruptly abandons his car, his home, his wife and his job to chase the hare into the forest. A year of comic misadventures ensues, where Vatanen and his unlikely companion battle through forest fires, pagan sacrifices, military war games and encounters with murderous bears, kept afloat by the help and understanding of other sympathetic free spirits. A much-loved classic in Finland, The Year of the Hare is a freewheeling adventure through the Finnish countryside, and a witty portrayal of one man's long detour from conventional living.

"No wonder the French have made this book into a cult. Finnish wit as sharp as the Arctic weather" - Mail on Sunday

"A change-your-life novel" - New York Magazine

"Sums up the Finnish culture and people" - Guardian

"A fable of the joys of freedom... The hare proves to be a delightful, undemanding, and loyal companion, who can laugh, listen, and feel embarrassment" - Boston Globe

"Paasilinna has been amusing Finns for thirty years and readers in twenty-five languages. He concocts situational comedy highlighted by deadpan, sometimes black humour" - New York Times

"Paasilinna's style is all Finn-a sly sense of humor, a simplicity, a moral compass that points firmly north and out of doors, away from cities... Readers root for Vatanen as he leaps off the mad merry-go-round" - Los Angeles Times

"Escapism at its best... Just pure fun-a fantasy of what might happen if one day you just said, 'Oh, the hell with it" - NPR

"Hilarious ... With its fiercely independent protagonist and its depiction of Finland's wild northland, this comic novel will offer readers a rare opportunity to experience Finland and read one of that country's most popular authors" - Library Journal

"Rarely do reviewers come upon a novel they believe to be a masterpiece, which they feel will become part of their imaginative lives. For me The Year of the Hare is such a work" - The European

"Exhilarating... Constantly heart-warming... For reading in the heart of winter, there couldn't be a more enjoyable antidote... You'll want to laugh out loud at all the good parts, and savor every lean, simple, honest sentence" - Shelf Awareness

"Amazing... It can be read over a long winter afternoon and will leave you feeling a little warmer inside" - San Francisco Book Review

"A wonderful book... The perfect escapist literature... It will have you laughing and gasping by turns... Of the many lines in this book that I cherished, the last is one of the most delicious: 'Vatanen is a man to be reckoned with.' So is this book" - Lonely Planet

"A joy... The glory of the outdoors is celebrated here, through each season, and we can nearly smell the early clover and meadow vetchling of the hare's diet... Vatanen is who we want to be [and] who we yearn to be brave enough to become, as soon as we stop waiting for the timing to be right" - BookPage

"An entertaining mix of fable, farce, mid-life crisis and road book. It is a fable of freedom, commitment and survival. It is series of comic bungles and misadventures" - NZ Herald