The Year of the Hare (Finnish: Jäniksen vuosi) is a 1975 novel by Finnish author Arto Paasilinna. It tells the story of Kaarlo Vatanen, a frustrated journalist, who, after nearly killing a hare with his car, decides to live with the hare in the wilderness.
The novel has been translated into over a dozen languages including English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Slovenian and Estonian. It is Paasilinna's most widely read work and was included in 1994 in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works which funded the 1995 English translation by Herbert Lomas. It was adapted twice into feature films: a Finnish 1977 film called The Year of the Hare, and a 2006 French film directed by Marc Rivière called Le Lièvre de Vatanen.
Famous quotes containing the words year and/or hare:
“Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.”
—Truman Capote (1924–1984)
“We watched her jug a hare, once, on television, years ago.... The hare had been half rotted, then cremated, then consumed. If there is a god and she is of the rabbit family, then Saskia will be in deep doo- doo on Judgment Day.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)