Published in 2000, ‘Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi’ (‘Not Before Sundown’) is a novel by Finnish writer Johanna Sinisalo that won the ‘Finlandia Prize‘ for literature in 2000. Aila Johanna Sinisalo is a Finnish science fiction and fantasy writer who studied comparative literature and drama, amongst other subjects, at the University of Tampere. She worked in the advertising business, rising to the level of marketing designer. An important figure in the Finnish science fiction scene in the late 1980s and early ’90s (winning a rare back-to-back collection of ‘Atorox Awards’ for short fiction in the genre), she was also the first Finnish science fiction writer to make a mainstream breakthrough by breaking genre barriers. ‘Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi’ was translated as ‘Not Before Sundown’ in 2003 and again as ‘Troll — A Love Story’ in 2004 for the American market) and has been translated into several languages. Its movie rights were acquired by Carter Smith in 2006, and Sinisalo is also the screenwriter of Energia Productions ‘Iron Sky’ movie, a sci-fi comedy set in 2018. ‘Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi’ story is about a homosexual photographer Mikael, who finds a young and injured troll from his home yard and takes it to his home. This troll is inspired by Finnish folklore and is an intelligent, almost human-like animal that in appearance resembles a cat and a monkey. In the world of the novel, trolls are existing animals instead of mythical creatures, although quite rare. The book has multiple narrative levels, and each chapter is broken into short segments that alternate between viewpoints of different characters. Interspersed between the story are newspaper articles, old stories, novel segments, jokes and other slightly altered pieces of history that illustrate the long relationship between humans and trolls in the world of the novel. By concentrating on gay characters the story explores power structures in interpersonal relationships without the need to consider how gender roles affect them. The title of the book as well as the names of its chapters are taken from the Finnish song ‘Päivänsäde ja Menninkäinen’ by Tapio Rautavaara and Reino Helismaa, which says “Kas, menninkäinen ennen päivänlaskua ei voi milloinkaan olla päällä maan” (“A troll cannot ever stay above the ground before sundown”).
