People have been in crisis mode for years. Poverty is rampant, the anger of the citizens is growing – the elite don’t care, because they benefit from it all. But then, in Days of Wrath, a young woman’s suicide sets a revolution in motion.
Finland in December. Instead of cheerful pre-Christmas hustle and bustle with good-humored people in the streets, the atmosphere in the capital Helsinki is tense in the thriller “Days of Anger”. The country is not doing well. For years, there has been an enormous burden of debt, arising from recent and older crises. The inexperienced Prime Minister Leo Koski, a former investment banker in London and only a few months in office, has to react. And he reacts. With an iron hand, he cuts social benefits and ensures that the gap between rich and poor continues to grow – as it did in the decades before.
Koski is hated by large parts of the Finnish population. More and more protests against him and his conservative policies are making their way onto the snowy streets of the country’s cities. Anger at him would be even greater if people knew that Koski is just a puppet: he hangs on the strings of a secret guild of Finland’s richest men, led by Pontus Ebeling, billionaire and mentor Koskis. The guild doesn’t give a damn about the normal “tracksuit fins”. What counts is your own profit, the size of the yacht, the splendor of the villa.
But then a young woman sets herself on fire: with her terrible suicide she wants to wake up the citizens and point out the social grievances in the country. Her death is now the spark that could end in a revolution, as the suicide comes just before the largest mass demonstration Finland has ever seen. Organized by a left alliance. The young woman has written three farewell letters – if only one of them gets out to the public, Finland will burn and the conservative government around Koski with her. And if Finland falls, that would be the blueprint for other countries in Europe, indeed the whole world!
“Days of Wrath” is the international debut of the Finn Tuomas Oskari. The plot could be made up, but it could also correspond completely to reality. It is not only in Finland that the rich are getting richer, at the expense of most of the rest of society. It is not only in Finland that the billions in financial aid and the Corona crisis have torn holes in the national budgets. Holes that need to be plugged and that will be plugged with social cuts. The debate about citizen income in this country shows the explosive nature of the situation. People who have hardly anything are played off against people who have nothing at all.
Oskari takes up these tensions and plays with the effects of a divided society. Politically, there is a conservative rally and a left-wing alliance. Black or white, right or left, rich or poor. Oskari wanted to polarize because it fits perfectly into the current time. A time when many societies in and outside of Europe are increasingly drifting apart. It would be negligent not to turn it into a critical thriller, a bestseller.
And a bestseller is “Days of Wrath” for sure. Complex characters, protagonists with rough edges, with strengths and weaknesses. A story with surprising twists. A story that goes to the heart and into the brain. A tale that wakes you up and shows that nothing is set in stone. Capitalism has not defeated socialism, it is simply left over.
But the time for a “new socialism” seems ripe. How about an AI-based planned economy? In Oskari’s book, this possibility sounds plausible. In general, the author, who is actually a Finnish business journalist by profession, comes up with a great deal of economic expertise. He clears prejudices against Karl Marx from the world. He compares the theories of Marx and John Maynard-Keynes. Because the two have one thing in common: They predicted a long time ago that the increasing imbalance between more and more poor people and a few rich people can destroy a society.
But an AI-based planned economy? Of course, one size smaller is also possible. Key word: wealth redistribution. But if the powerful hold all the political strings in their hands, who is going to set them in motion? Leo Koski. But for that he has to stand up to his foster father and his powerful guild – and stay alive first. But that December in Finland is anything but an easy task.
