It does seem as if it is indeed having some effect on her breathing, but is this the datura’s only influence? Having heard something of the (dubious) pharmacological properties of the plant, she subsequently commences to dose her tea, whilst at work, with trace quantities of the datura’s crushed-up seeds, in the expectation that it may alleviate her chronic bronchial troubles.

The novel opens with the subeditor receiving a potted plant-thought initially to be an angel’s trumpet, but subsequently revealed to be datura-as a birthday present from her sister and brother-in-law. It’s hard to like the cynical and shallow Markus, who at one point decides that what’s really needed in the magazine’s associated mail-order store, co-located in the subeditor’s workspace, is a large consignment of novelty rock’n’roll singing fish the subeditor-who is at least (generally) willing to listen to people, even when she finds it impossible not to privately class them as cranks-is a more sympathetic figure. Of the two people involved in the production of New Anomalist, only one (the long-suffering, sporadically cranky subeditor and the novel’s narrator) actually works on the magazine the managing editor, Markus (known to all and sundry as ‘The Marquis’) merely comes up with a series of unworkable ideas and unreliable story leads for the subeditor to pursue. Her Wikipedia page lists over thirty titles, comparatively few of which are available in English translation for those looking for an overview, much of the English-translated material has been released by Cheeky Frawg Books in Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction, which runs to 800+ pages.ĭatura (or A Delusion We All See) ( Datura tai harha jonka jokainen näkee, 2001, translated by Anna Volmari and J Robert Tupasela) is a short novel, somewhat picaresque, that relates the happenings at the office of the small and esoteric New Anomalist magazine, a journal crammed with opinion pieces, reports, and speculation on a plethora of paranormal, metaphysical, and outlandish topics.

She’s received numerous awards for her writing and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award. Leena Krohn is a long-established Finnish writer of fiction that could variously be described as speculative, literary, or weird.

Datura leena krohn