Discover new books on Goodreads

See if your friends have read any of Frans Emil Sillanpää's books

Frans Emil Sillanpää’s Followers (44)

Frans Emil Sillanpää

Born

in Hämeenkyrö, Finland

September 16, 1888

Died

June 03, 1964

edit data

Frans Emil Sillanpää was born on the 16th of September, 1888, at Ylä-Satakunta in the Hämeenkyrö Parish of Finland on a desolate croft of the same name. The cottage had been built by his parents, his father Frans Henrik Henriksson, who had moved there some ten years before from Kauvatsa in the Kumo Valley, and his mother, Loviisa Vilhelmiina Iisaksdotter, whose family had lived in the Hämeenkyrö Parish from times immemorial.

Sillanpää's parents had experienced all the trials and tribulations common to generations of settlers in those parts of Finland. Frosts had killed their seeds, farm animals had perished, and the farmer's children, too, had died, until only Frans Emil, the youngest of the offspring, was left.

There was only a mobile school Frans Emil Sillanpää was born on the 16th of September, 1888, at Ylä-Satakunta in the Hämeenkyrö Parish of Finland on a desolate croft of the same name. The cottage had been built by his parents, his father Frans Henrik Henriksson, who had moved there some ten years before from Kauvatsa in the Kumo Valley, and his mother, Loviisa Vilhelmiina Iisaksdotter, whose family had lived in the Hämeenkyrö Parish from times immemorial.

Sillanpää's parents had experienced all the trials and tribulations common to generations of settlers in those parts of Finland. Frosts had killed their seeds, farm animals had perished, and the farmer's children, too, had died, until only Frans Emil, the youngest of the offspring, was left.

There was only a mobile school for the farm children, and it was purely by accident - young Sillanpää's life was to abound in accidents - that the crofter's son, who was regarded as a bright lad, came to attend a regular school where he displayed a real aptitude for learning. Some idealists decided that nothing less than a secondary school at Tampere would do and, after giving the matter some thought, old Sillanpää consented to send his son away. For five years, Sillanpää's parents pinched and scraped to keep their son in school, after which he supported himself for another three years and, in 1908, matriculated with good marks. This was a time in Finland when a promising young man could study almost indefinitely on borrowed money, and young Sillanpää was not slow to avail himself of this miscarriage of educational zeal. He plunged into learning and his studies were as chaotic as they were long drawn-out. He did, however, choose biology as his basic subject and worked hard in the laboratory, cutting up things, studying them under the microscope, and drawing what he saw until, one fine day, he woke up to find that five years had gone by; his examination day was still far off and the kind old gentlemen who had been lending him money were not prepared to do so any longer. He scraped together enough cash to return to his home, where he found his father and mother poorer than ever. He lived in their hut and shared their meals, which could hardly excite a gourmet's palate.

His student days were over, his amorous escapades a thing of the past, but at least it was easy enough for him to start from nothing. Sillanpää acquired at a nearby village shop some stationary of the type favoured by village lads for private correspondence and wrote a short story, which he sent to the editor of a large city paper without much hope of seeing it published. To use an expression popular in those days, the story must have been written with his heart's blood because, after a very short time, it appeared on the front page of the aforesaid paper and its author received a very handsome letter from the editor's secretary, as well as his fee, which was more than welcome. The story had been published under a pen name but the literary world of Helsinki soon discovered the identity of the author and the erstwhile eternal scholar found himself, to his amazement, receiving letters of extravagant praise. After several more of his stories had been published in the same paper, something very unusual happened. He was approached by a wellknown publisher who asked to be borne in mind should Sillanpää's literary output stretch to a whole book. The publisher went so far as to offer him a reasonable advance to enable him to work in peace.

Yet another wonder - one of a series - occurred at that time. At an unimportant village dance, Sillanpää met a shy seventeen-year-old girl who, insisting that she could not dance, sat far at the back of the dance hall. In spite of her resistance, Sillanpää dragged her out onto the dance floor to discover that she could dance after all, which she proceeded to do with the utmost seriousness and concentration. This was the beginning of a twenty-five-year saga, during which Sigrid Maria (for such was the name of the se ...more

Combine Editions
Frans Emil Sillanpää’s books

Average rating: 3.49 · 2,124 ratings · 210 reviews · 47 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Maid Silja by Frans Emil Sillanpää, Alexander Matson (Translator) 3.55 avg rating — 684 ratings — published 1931 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hurskas kurjuus 3.47 avg rating — 564 ratings — published 1919 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	People in the Summer Night: An Epic Suite by Frans Emil Sillanpää, Alan Blair (Translator) 3.59 avg rating — 479 ratings — published 1934 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hiltu ja Ragnar 3.21 avg rating — 107 ratings — published 1923 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Elokuu 3.40 avg rating — 94 ratings — published 1941 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Elämä ja aurinko by Frans Emil Sillanpää, Panu Rajala (Esipuhe) 3.13 avg rating — 53 ratings — published 1916 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Silja ja Ihmiset suviyössä (Kootut teokset, #5) 3.46 avg rating — 28 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	De weg van een man by Frans Emil Sillanpää, Siegfried E. van Praag (translator) 3.65 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 1932 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus 2.89 avg rating — 18 ratings — published 1945 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hurskas kurjuus ja kansalaissodan kirjoitukset (Kootut teokset, #2) liked it 3.00 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 1973	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Frans Emil Sillanpää…

Series by Frans Emil Sillanpää

Delfiinikirjat (1 book)
by

Frans Emil Sillanpää,

Alan Blair (Translator)

3.59 avg rating — 479 ratings

Quotes by Frans Emil Sillanpää (?)

“Milyen szomorú, hogy a szerelem mindig ébredésekor a legfinomabb és a legtisztább, és a legtöbb esetben később csak beszennyeződik.”
― Frans Eemil Sillanpää

0 likes

Polls

The best winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Han Kang (2024)

41 votes, 6.0%

Sully Prudhomme (1901)

39 votes, 5.8%

László Krasznahorkai (2025)

24 votes, 3.5%

Bob Dylan (2016)

23 votes, 3.4%

Gabriel García Márquez (1982)

22 votes, 3.2%

Jon Fosse (2023)

20 votes, 2.9%

Toni Morrison (1993)

19 votes, 2.8%

Albert Camus (1957)

18 votes, 2.7%

Annie Ernaux (2022)

18 votes, 2.7%

José Saramago (1998)

17 votes, 2.5%

Kazuo Ishiguro (2017)

16 votes, 2.4%

Rudyard Kipling (1907)

14 votes, 2.1%

Olga Tokarczuk (2018)

14 votes, 2.1%

Thomas Mann (Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family) (1929)

13 votes, 1.9%

Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea) (1954)

13 votes, 1.9%

John Steinbeck (1962)

11 votes, 1.6%

Orhan Pamuk (2006)

11 votes, 1.6%

Samuel Beckett (1969)

10 votes, 1.5%

W.B. Yeats (1923)

9 votes, 1.3%

Seamus Heaney (1995)

9 votes, 1.3%

Louise Glück (2020)

9 votes, 1.3%

Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021)

9 votes, 1.3%

Theodor Mommsen (A History of Rome) (1902)

8 votes, 1.2%

Henri Bergson (1927)

8 votes, 1.2%

William Faulkner (1949)

8 votes, 1.2%

Jean-Paul Sartre (1964)

8 votes, 1.2%

Elfriede Jelinek (2004)

8 votes, 1.2%

Anne Carson (2026)

8 votes, 1.2%

George Bernard Shaw (1925)

7 votes, 1.0%

Hermann Hesse (1946)

7 votes, 1.0%

T.S. Eliot (1948)

7 votes, 1.0%

Bertrand Russell (1950)

7 votes, 1.0%

Naguib Mahfouz (1988)

7 votes, 1.0%

Rabindranath Tagore (1913)

6 votes, 0.9%

Gao Xingjian (2000)

6 votes, 0.9%

Peter Handke (2019)

6 votes, 0.9%

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1903)

5 votes, 0.7%

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905)

5 votes, 0.7%

Selma Lagerlöf (1909)

5 votes, 0.7%

Anatole France (1921)

5 votes, 0.7%

Sigrid Undset (1928)

5 votes, 0.7%

Winston Churchill (1953)

5 votes, 0.7%

Halldór Laxness (1955)

5 votes, 0.7%

Yasunari Kawabata (1968)

5 votes, 0.7%

Mo Yan (2012)

5 votes, 0.7%

Romain Rolland (1915)

4 votes, 0.6%

Patrick White (1973)

4 votes, 0.6%

Odysseas Elytis (1979)

4 votes, 0.6%

Czesław Miłosz (1980)

4 votes, 0.6%

William Golding (1983)

4 votes, 0.6%

Herta Müller (2009)

4 votes, 0.6%

Alice Munro (2013)

4 votes, 0.6%

Svetlana Alexievich (2015)

4 votes, 0.6%

José Echegaray (1904)

3 votes, 0.4%

Paul Heyse (1910)

3 votes, 0.4%

Maurice Maeterlinck (1911)

3 votes, 0.4%

Knut Hamsun (Growth of the Soil) (1920)

3 votes, 0.4%

Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931)

3 votes, 0.4%

Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956)

3 votes, 0.4%

Boris Pasternak (1958)

3 votes, 0.4%

Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967)

3 votes, 0.4%

Eugenio Montale (1975)

3 votes, 0.4%

Saul Bellow (1976)

3 votes, 0.4%

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)

3 votes, 0.4%

Joseph Brodsky (1987)

3 votes, 0.4%

Wisława Szymborska (1996)

3 votes, 0.4%

Günter Grass (1999)

3 votes, 0.4%

Doris Lessing (2007)

3 votes, 0.4%

Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)

3 votes, 0.4%

Patrick Modiano (2014)

3 votes, 0.4%

Giosuè Carducci (1906)

2 votes, 0.3%

Karl Gjellerup (1917)

2 votes, 0.3%

Henrik Pontoppidan (1917)

2 votes, 0.3%

Jacinto Benavente (1922)

2 votes, 0.3%

Władysław Stanisław Reymont (The Peasants) (1924)

2 votes, 0.3%

Sinclair Lewis (1930)

2 votes, 0.3%

John Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga) (1932)

2 votes, 0.3%

Luigi Pirandello (1934)

2 votes, 0.3%

Pearl S. Buck (1938)

2 votes, 0.3%

Frans Emil Sillanpää (1939)

2 votes, 0.3%

Gabriela Mistral (1945)

2 votes, 0.3%

André Gide (1947)

2 votes, 0.3%

Pär Lagerkvist (1951)

2 votes, 0.3%

François Mauriac (1952)

2 votes, 0.3%

Salvatore Quasimodo (1959)

2 votes, 0.3%

Ivo Andrić (1961)

2 votes, 0.3%

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)

2 votes, 0.3%

Pablo Neruda (1971)

2 votes, 0.3%

Harry Martinson (1974)

2 votes, 0.3%

Elias Canetti (1981)

2 votes, 0.3%

Jaroslav Seifert (1984)

2 votes, 0.3%

Claude Simon (1985)

2 votes, 0.3%

Camilo José Cela (1989)

2 votes, 0.3%

Octavio Paz (1990)

2 votes, 0.3%

Kenzaburō Ōe (1994)

2 votes, 0.3%

J.M. Coetzee (2003)

2 votes, 0.3%

Frédéric Mistral (1904)

1 vote, 0.1%

Carl Spitteler (Olympian Spring) (1919)

1 vote, 0.1%

Grazia Deledda (1926)

1 vote, 0.1%

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1933)

1 vote, 0.1%

Eugene O'Neill (1936)

1 vote, 0.1%

Roger Martin du Gard (The Thibaults) (1937)

1 vote, 0.1%

Johannes V. Jensen (1944)

1 vote, 0.1%

Saint-John Perse (1960)

1 vote, 0.1%

George Seferis (1963)

1 vote, 0.1%

Nelly Sachs (1966)

1 vote, 0.1%

Eyvind Johnson (1974)

1 vote, 0.1%

Vicente Aleixandre (1977)

1 vote, 0.1%

Wole Soyinka (1986)

1 vote, 0.1%

Derek Walcott (1992)

1 vote, 0.1%

Dario Fo (1997)

1 vote, 0.1%

V.S. Naipaul (2001)

1 vote, 0.1%

Imre Kertész (2002)

1 vote, 0.1%

Tomas Tranströmer (2011)

1 vote, 0.1%

Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1908)

0 votes, 0.0%

Gerhart Hauptmann (1912)

0 votes, 0.0%

Verner von Heidenstam (1916)

0 votes, 0.0%

Mikhail Sholokhov (And Quiet Flows the Don) (1965)

0 votes, 0.0%

S.Y. Agnon (1966)

0 votes, 0.0%

Heinrich Böll (1972)

0 votes, 0.0%

Nadine Gordimer (1991)

0 votes, 0.0%

Harold Pinter (2005)

0 votes, 0.0%

J.M.G. Le Clézio (2008)

0 votes, 0.0%

678 total votes

7 comments

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Netherlands & Fla...: Herfst 2012 - Rondje om de wereld (2)	46	190	Dec 20, 2012 01:20PM
Suomalainen lukup...: 39. Nobel-voittajan kirjoittama kirja	10	43	Aug 15, 2016 02:34AM
Catching up on Cl...: Miikka's 2017 Old & New Classic Challenge	6	34	Dec 15, 2016 03:02PM
21st Century Lite...: Holidays	604	390	Jan 10, 2017 10:30PM
Let's Talk About ...: Anything Goes	1510	287	Apr 27, 2017 04:26PM
Nothing But Readi...: Princess Leia BOOKS READ	509	246	Jul 29, 2017 03:42PM
Suomalainen lukup...: * Kirjalistat	26	133	Aug 23, 2017 12:09PM

More…