born Sept. 16, 1888, Hämeenkyrö, Fin., Russian Empire
died June 3, 1964, Helsinki, Fin.
Finnish novelist.
The son of a farmer, he studied natural science but returned to the country to write. Shocked by the Finnish civil war of 1918, he produced his most substantial novel, Meek Heritage (1919), relating how a humble cottager becomes involved with the Red Guards. After several collections of short stories in the late 1920s, he published his best-known work, The Maid Silja (1931), about an old peasant family. People in the Summer Night (1934) is his most polished and poetic novel. In 1939 he became the first Finnish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.