Instead it was Tove Jansson’s own mother who inspired the creation of Moominmamma. (And yes, that’s an awful lot of m’s all at once.)
Here is the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s first Bookwitch interview. Tove’s niece Sophia talks about her famous aunt and those ‘ugly’ creatures, the Moomin family, as well as the new books.
I really, really wish you could hear this interview in the original. Well, half of it, anyway. The witch sounds absolutely awful, but Sophia’s Finnish-Swedish accent is so beautiful. It’s like listening to Little My, except she’s not angry, or even a little sharp.
Sophia’s English is extremely good, but it still felt natural for us to speak Swedish. Any peculiarities in the translation are entirely my fault. And as tends to be the case these days, not even native speakers can manage without the odd English word.
(And as Tove Jansson seems to get out and about all the time, here is a link to Normblog from the last few days.)
I come to this link from NYRB classics discussion of The Summer Book, and it is fascinating to hear of Sophia now & Tove’s writing style. Many thanks for posting this interesting interview.
Thanks, Trish.