Episode 52: Hanna Pylväinen - THE END OF DRUM-TIME

Hanna Pylväinen has been writing fiction about the small Finnish fundamentalist sect she was raised in for years. In her 2012 debut novel, We Sinners, she follows a large, Midwestern family as they navigate their relationships to each other and to the church at the heart of their lives. Over the years since she wrote that novel, Pylväinen has learned more about the origins of that religious order, called Laestadianism after the pastor who founded it, and its relationship to the colonization of Finland and displacement of the Sami people and their traditions. Her new novel, The End of Drum-Time, takes a new look at Laestadianism, exploring the dynamics of imperialism, the instrumentalization of religion in settler-colonialism, and the limitations on our ability to see past our own perspective.