‘Kolme saarta – isä, äiti ja minä’ (Siltala 2025) (Three Islands – Father, Mother and Me) is a stunning story about family, the price of silence and the liberating power of storytelling.

Sophia Jansson’s autobiography features three islands: Tonga, where the Jansson siblings Tove and Lars would have wanted to move to in the 1940s, Ibiza, where Sophia lived as a young child, and the island of Pelling, where the Janssons have spent time for generations.

The relationship between Sophia’s father Lars and mother Nita was not based on passionate love, but they shared the most important thing in their lives: a child. Nita died young. The father and daughter had to manage without her.

The father represented security and care, but also impenetrable silence. What happened to mum? And was Lars, the father, the saint that Sophia always thought he was? The whole Jansson family becomes familiar to the reader: grandfather Viktor suffers from depression and “fascination with Germany”, his wife Ham draws and gets by. Tove and Lars leave home to become independent.

Sophia Jansson is interviewed by Hanna Karhu, PhD, literary researcher.

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