This is War!

Les Guerriers de l’hiver by Olivier Norek was published in 2024. It is a work of historical fiction that takes place at the beginning of the Second World War, centred on the military conflict between the USSR and Finland, known as The Winter War. I am reading the book in French.

The narrative follows the lives of a few different characters. The first character we’re introduced to is Simo Häyhä, who was a real-life Finnish sniper during the war. Chapter 1 begins with Simo hunting in the forest. I appreciated the pacing of the beginning of the first chapter. Simo moves slowly and meticulously through the wooded area, synchronizing his breathing with his prey and taking his time to get the perfect shot. We soon realize that he is accompanied by his father, who is coaching him. At this moment, Norek describes Simo as “a child”, which I found a bit confusing, since I was under the impression that he was in his late teens at the beginning of the story. I soon realized that the narrative jumps back and forth in time, sometimes without any indication as to where we are in the timeline. It also switches between the stories of different characters quite rapidly. I found this to be a bit disorienting, but not necessarily in a bad way. It meant that I had to reread certain parts, such as when we are introduced to a girl named Leena, who was given her notice of military service, which upsets her father. The next time the narrative jumps to Leena’s story, all of a sudden we are in the past. However, there is no indication given of the date when this segment takes place. It is only when we jump back to the present day (1939), that we find out that the previous part took place four years prior. This back and forth on the timeline made it a bit challenging to follow the story, but I eventually got used to it and learned that I cannot assume that what I’m reading is actually taking place around the time of the Winter War. Leena’s story was very intriguing for me though. She was part of the Lotta Svärd, which was the Finnish women’s paramilitary organization. She is the only female character whose story we follow. I was always excited when the narrative focused on her, since I can identify with her, not only because she’s a woman, but also because of her determination to be involved in the war. Her story resonated with me. I was thinking about how I would have wanted to volunteer to be a Lotta Svärd if I had been living in Finland at the time. Perhaps this is just a naïve thought of mine, since I’ve never been exposed to war, and one can never be certain as to how they would react if they were living in a different time period and in a different country while facing the threat of war. But I really enjoyed the exchanges she had with her father, in which he would try to convince her not to go and she would be defiant and express her determination to become a Lotta.

There are a few other characters whose stories we follow, including that of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, who was a real military leader. Norek describes some of the uncertainty that he has at the time, as he is worried about the safety of his daughters, while he is also faced with important decisions that he needs to make regarding the mobilization of the military units. I don’t exactly know which characters are based on real people and which are completely fictional. So far, Simo and Mannerheim are the only ones who I know were historical figures, but I plan on doing a bit of research to find out if anyone else that we’ve been introduced to was a real person.

Another character we’re introduced to is Azarov, who is a prisoner in the Gulag of the USSR. When he is told that he has to go fight in the war, he is overjoyed by the fact that he can finally get a break from being in the horrific Gulag. He says that he is willing to do whatever he is commanded to do, as long as he can be out of the Gulag for as long as possible.

For the most part, each chapter is very short (some are as short as a page and a half), which demonstrates how quickly the narrative jumps back and forth from one character’s story to another. I don’t mind this style, however, sometimes I wish that we could spend more time with a single character, before moving on to another. We do revisit each character, but it’s done in this sort of fast-paced manner, with occasional flashbacks to the past, before jumping back to the present time. I’ve never read any other novels by Norek, but I wonder if this is characteristic of his writing style. I read up until page 97 (about one fifth of the novel), which was the first 18 chapters of the book. I hope that the pace will eventually slow down a bit.

All in all, my first impressions of Les Guerriers de l’hiver have been fairly positive. I’m eager to continue reading it as soon as possible. I don’t want to have to wait, but I know that I need to switch gears now and go back to reading Bolaño…