Notes from an Island

In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson—author of the iconic novel The Summer Book and the beloved Moomin series—built a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. For thirty years, Tove and her beloved partner, Tuulikki “Tooti” Pietilä, lived, painted, and wrote, energized by flora, fauna, the shifting seascapes, and solitude and shifting seascapes. Jansson’s spare, quirky prose, and Tooti’s subtle artwork combine to form a work of meditative beauty. Notes from an Island is both a beautiful chronicle of a rugged ecology and an intimate collaboration between to artists in love with each other—and the island itself.

This edition also includes Jansson’s essay The Island, described by Pulitzer Prize finalist Hernan Diaz as “…a short story, an essay, and a prose poem … the text seems to change following mysterious tides from a timeless present to an urgent past.”

• Author: Tove Jansson
  
• Illustrator: Tuulikki Pietilä
• Publisher: Timber Press
• Hardcover, 128 pages