The pulse and murk of the big city were revealed to Kari Hotakainen in the autumn of 1976. In the summer he had taken the university entrance exam for Finnish literature and Romance philology and had been granted the right to major in both subjects. The move to Helsinki from a small municipality seemed to offer limitless opportunity.

Kari Hotakainen has had the opportunity and the time to write a broad spectrum of texts. As writer, he has become an all-rounder. – I have always thought that I would write everything possible that came my way. I have written news reports and columns, advertising slogans, poetry and prose, plays and film scripts.

According to the author Kari Hotakainen, fiction cannot be written to order, although he has been commissioned to do other forms of writing. If he wished, he could discuss the topic of his books with his publisher, Touko Siltala, but they have not been in the habit of so doing. – Siltala knows that I’ll go off to my cabin and come out two years later with a pile of text.

At the University of Helsinki Faculty of Arts, there were intellectually stimulating teachers and professors. They were admired and their teaching was thirstily absorbed. In a few cases, I wondered, horror struck, if I too would turn out like them. For others I thought, “if only I could be like that.”

A successful writer either enters or is forced into the limelight. In addition to bookshop podiums, after the publication of a new book comes a flood of interview requests. The media is often more interested in the author’s private life than in the book itself. For Kari Hotakainen this is a little difficult. For him the book, in its autonomy, is the most important thing: every reader reads and experiences it in their own way, and the writer’s persona or private life should be of no significance.

At the moment I am dreaming of the protagonist in my next novel.