had a brief religious awakening and wrote daily to Tuula Pekkola. His spiritual search was finally ended by a vision he experienced, which instantly settled his views on life and death and around the turn of the year he began writing the novel The Earth is a Sinful Song which, as he explained to his publisher later, was a thorough description of those views. Career and later life Over his career he completed nine novels, written in a lyrical prose style, about the life and harsh conditions in Lapland, the region of his childhood and of most of his adult life. The works were published in between 1964 and 1970. In the early 1960s there sprang up a movement in Finnish literature that rebelled against conventional moral and sexual norms. It was heavily influenced by the writings of Henry Miller. Its two most prominent representatives were the enfants terribles of modernist Finnish literature, poet and translator Pentti Saarikoski and author Hannu Salama. Mukka is considered as one of the most original writers of this era. He portrayed his subjects as part of the arctic milieu and explored the questions of religion, subjectivity, sexuality, and mental distress and illness in his works. In 1973, Finnish tabloid journal Hymy published a sensationalist article on Mukka which is believed to have contributed to the deterioration of his health. Mukka died in Rovaniemi, the capital of the Lapland region of Finland, in 1973. Mukka's first novel, The Earth is a Sinful Song, was in 1973 adapted into a popular movie, The Land of Our Ancestors, the first film by the Finnish director, Rauni Mollberg. The film's cinema verite style reflects the author's style in a precise way. Upon its 1974 release, it was the most widely attended film in Finnish film history. However, the Finnish National Film Board limited its distribution. In 1980, Mollberg adapted Mukka's second novel, Tabu (1965) into a film, Milka. References Timo K. Mukka: Annan sinun lukea tämänkin, Kirjeitä 1958-1973; Ed. Toni Lahtinen Anna Ovaska: Fictions of Madness: Shattering Minds and Worlds in Modernist Finnish Literature. Diss. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2020. . http://www.kirjojentakana.fi/timo-k-mukka http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/artikkeli/4900/ Notes External links Ovaska, Anna. Fictions of Madness: Shattering Minds and Worlds in Modernist Finnish Literature. Dis. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2020. . 1944 births 1973 deaths People from Bollnäs Finnish-language writers 20th-century Finnish novelists Finnish refugees Refugees in Sweden