Risto Isomäki

Risto Isomäki (b. 1961) is a widely respected writer, columnist and environmental activist. He has published more than 40 novels and non-fiction books. Sands of Sarasvati (Tammi 2005) won a number of literary awards and its comic book version won Finland’s most important prize for cartoons, the Comic Book Finlandia Award. The Tree (Kirjayhtymä, 1991) was awarded by the prize of the European Science Fiction Association. Vietnam’s ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism included Con rit into its list of the ten most outstanding books published in 2023, as the first non-Vietnamese book ever to receive this honor. Isomäki’s books have been translated to more than 20 languages.

Isomäki is most well-known as one of the pioneers of a literary genre known as “Climate Fiction”. He has developed a form of thriller or detective story, in which the murderer has been replaced by an environmental threat, often related to global warming. His stories begin by introducing a slowly revealed mysterious threat – and then develop into a cliff-hanger in which the final, hair-raising climax happens in almost real time.

The other important theme in Isomäki’s fiction are ancient myths that were common to all continents even before they were in contact with each other. Sands of Sarasvati presents a new theory about the myth about Atlantis, the sunken continent. Con rit argues that the almost universal stories about sea dragons or great sea serpents may have been based on a real, but now extinct marine creature. Children of the Deluge (published by Into in English in 2026) outlines a new version of the so called aquatic ape theory and claims that stories about mermaids or sea people might be reflections of our own, distant past.

Isomäki has also written a number of non-fiction books about food-producing trees, renewable energy and other solutions to global warming, as well as about the history, presence and future of nuclear technology.