Finnish author’s 2023 novel to come to India on October 23; will bring spotlight back on Steller’s sea cow

The publisher MacLehose Press will bring out the ebook version of Finnish author Iida Turpeinen’s award winning novel Beasts of the Sea in India on October 23, 2025. It will bring back the spotlight on the enigmatic Steller’s sea cow, a sirenian that was hunted to extinction in just 27 years nearly three centuries ago.

Beasts of the Sea was originally published in Finland in 2023. It won several awards including the Book Beat Newcomer Award, The Thank You for the Book Award, Finland’s booksellers’ prize, the best debut award, the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, the Storytel award. It was also a nominee for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, as well as for the Torch-bearer Prize.

“Approaching natural diversity through individual destinies, it’s a story of grand human ambitions and the urge to resurrect what humankind in its ignorance has destroyed. Steller’s sea cow, a sirenian lost to extinction centuries ago, is revived on the pages and is the red thread that ties together the individual fates of a group of people throughout the centuries,” the Helsinki Literary Agency notes in its profile of the book.

The English-language edition is scheduled for publication through a partnership between MacLehose Press and Little, Brown and Company. It releases in the UK on October 23.

The Great Northern Expedition

It was in 1725 that the First Kamchatka Expedition began, a few months after Peter the Great, Tsar of the Russian Empire died at the age of 52.

Peter, unlike other European powers of the day who were pushing west to the Americas, believed that Russia’s destiny lay east.

Danish explorer Vitus Bering, who headed the First Kamchatka Expedition, and his huge party of soldiers, sailors, scientists and labourers had to trudge with scientific equipment and supplies from St Petersburg to Okhotsk.

They explored Kamchatka. The success of the expedition prompted the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition.

It was during this expedition that Bering and his party were shipwrecked on the Commander Islands that today belong to Russia.

Bering died along with a number of his men on what is today named as Bering Island. Among his party was Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German-born naturalist-cum-physician.

He documented the flora and fauna on the island (6 species of mammals and birds are named after him).

It was in 1741 that Steller's sea cow was described by Georg Wilhelm Steller. Within 27 years, it was gone, hunted for its meat, fat, and hide.

“A tribute to an iconic lost creature, and an adventure through three centuries of scientific exploration, Beasts of the Sea charts the unseen consequences of grand human ambitions and the urge to resurrect what we, in our ignorance, have destroyed,” reads the Amazon.com entry of the book.

Turpeinen is a literary scholar writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature. She lives in Helsinki.