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Longlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction
published in handback February 2006,
by Fig Tree (Penguin),
ISBN 0670914517
and in Penguin paperback in February 2007
at £7.99, ISBN 9780141015026
House of Orphans opens in Finland in 1901, when Finland was still part of the Russian Empire. Eeva, the young orphaned daughter of a revolutionary, is sent from Helsinki to a country orphanage. Once she is old enough, she goes to work as housekeeper for Thomas Eklund, a widowed doctor. Eeva’s challenging, independent, enigmatic presence disturbs Thomas as much as it fascinates him. Their relationship will not only shatter Thomas’ personal life, but also lead him to question his place in the social and political order.
Eeva is drawn back to her childhood home, Helsinki, and to Lauri, a childhood friend now deeply involved in revolutionary politics. As the power of the Russian Empire over its subject peoples grows more oppressive, resistance to the Tsar’s rule is rising. But is any method of overthrowing the Tsar’s rule justified? What is a fight for freedom, and what is terrorism?
In House of Orphans, as in Helen Dunmore’s earlier novel The Siege, huge public events bear down on private lives and transform them. A spelling-binding story of love and loneliness is also a historical drama about a country’s struggle for independence.
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