In this novel, the modern-day Finland is a dictatorship.
Unlike the real-life dictatorships like North Korea, however, the Finland in this story does not have an authoritarian leader to be worshipped. Instead, the Finns are always encouraged to improve their health and their standings in society. Trappings of modern technology such as internet and cellphones do not exist (presumably because of its bad radiation effects). Alcohol, tobacco, narcotic drugs, and chili peppers are outlawed.
Did you just read chili peppers? Yes, you read that right.
Chili in this novel is treated almost like a narcotic substance in our real world, where anyone caught with it is instantly sent to prison. The logic for banning chili is that it can produce a “high” that is deemed unhealthy for the public.
The Finland in this story also has legalized free sex (even sex-for-cash) for the vast majority of the population, as long as the individuals involved belong to the main social classes of “masco” and “eloi”. Mascos are the men who have desirable masculine qualities to pass to the offsprings such as strong and being of sound mind. Eloi are the feminine women who are submissive and willing to serve their masco boyfriends/husbands in anything they do.
The ones outside of the masco-eloi classes (who are called “minus men” and “morlock” respectively) are also allowed to have sex and even marry, as long as they have been sterilized beforehand. The minus men and morlock are deemed unsuitable for the “mating market” because they are seen as not possessing the stereotypical masculine or feminine traits respectively.
Being secretly a morlock who has had no desire to submit herself to any men, Vera was raised by her grandmother as an eloi so that she could receive the better things in life such as high-quality schooling and better treatments from superiors.
Everything was going fine until one day Vera’s sister Mira (who is a genuine eloi) disappeared. Vera and Jare had to do chili-dealing, to save money so they could find out what has happened to Mira (among other things).
The novel goes back and forth from Vera’s perspective to her boyfriend Jare’s, and there are some occasional peeks into Vera’s unsent letters to her sister Mira that shows what a close bond Vera has had to her empty-headed eloi sister who disappeared.
Overall, I really like this kind of dystopian story by the Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo. I had initially expected it the dystopia to be something more like Hunger Games or Divergent, but that is probably because of my overexposure to American novels and films.
There are also numerous references to different types of chilis that the characters try to cross-breed to gain a higher scoville rating (and thus, fetch a higher price when they are sold in the Finnish black market). In the course of the novel, I have read about the milder stuff such as sambal oelek and vindaloo paste, in addition to learning about super-hot chilis such as habanero and Naga Viper.
As the entire novel is told from a first-person perspective, we can also see that Vera also has a synaesthesia gets activated whenever she meets someone new or notices a mood change, among other things. When she uses her “fix” of “chili drug”, she also describes the chili themselves not just in terms of flavour or smell, but also in terms of colour and sound.
If you want to read a dystopian genre that shows a unique kind of dictatorship that is not too similar to the Hollywood-style dystopia you see littering the modern pop culture these days, you would definitely not be disappointed with this novel.
PS: in case I want to reread this novel in the future, some of the most important essence of this book is found on pages 230 to 232 of this English-language edition.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
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This review was entirely taken from
my own review of the book at Goodreads.
