Tangled Roots

Rights sold:

WORLD ENGLISH: HarperCollins

CROATIA: Planetopia
ESTONIA: Rahva Raamat
FINLAND: Gummerus
FRANCE: Editions Leduc.s

Original title: Arvejord

Author: Maria Turtschaninoff

Illustrator: Maria Turtschaninoff

Class/genre: Literary Fiction

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Tangled Roots is an episodic work of literary fiction depicting human relationships with nature across generations, following in the tradition of family sagas like One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
The roots of people and forest are intertwined in the depths of the earth.
An old soldier carves a croft out of the Finnish forest and calls it home, but try as he might to tame the land, its wild magic endures. For centuries his descendants will work the farm, through days of plenty and famine, love and war, their fates entangled with the rhythms of the ancient wilderness, where mysterious shapes flit between the trees and danger lurks in the treacherous fen…
Like dragonflies darting over the marsh, their lives glimmer briefly and then are gone: a young girl entranced by the forest folk, a faithless fiancé who meets his match beneath the age-old branches, a farmhand with a strange obsession…
What endures is the wild, and the certainty that wherever we put down roots, the land will grow roots in us too.

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Maria Turtschaninoff


Maria Turtschaninoff is known for crafting lyrical, historically inspired fantasy stories starring strong female protagonists. In addition to J.R.R. Tolkien, she counts Philip Pullman, Ursula K. Le Guin and C.S. Lewis among her favorite authors. She is a two-time winner of the Society of Swedish Literature Prize, winner of the Swedish YLE Literature Prize, winner of the Thank You for the Book Award, a nominee for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2020-2024), and winner of the 2014 Finlandia Junior Prize. In 2024, Maria Turtschaninoff won the Eeva Joenpelto Literary Prize (10,000 euro award) for her literary masterpiece Tangled Roots.

Her Red Abbey Chronicles YA trilogy has been sold into 30 languages, while her first adult novel Tangled Roots has been sold to 23 territories. Maria has a Master of Arts in human ecology and works full-time as a writer.

Bibliography


Maria Turtschaninoff

Maresi

2014, Young Adults


Maria Turtschaninoff

Naondel

2016, Young Adults


Maria Turtschaninoff

Maresi: Red Mantle

2018, Young Adults

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