​A book about cynicism and hope in a collapsing world, about corruption of ideals and bad motherhood, about a journey, about trees and heroes.

Salmela’s new novel is very readable, it has an atmosphere; it stays on top of things and deals with them with irony. All of this is typical for her writing, but the book is different from her previous work. The story takes place in the country of socialistic ecodictatorship. It is a country of mottoes: all people, animals and plants live together in harmony, they honour the Great Mother. This country is a fortress standing in the first line of a battle against fierce global capitalism. Utopia becomes reality.

The main character named Antti is an orphan. Just like two hundred other children, he got a surname Hero, according to the heroic deeds of his parents who died for the motherland. The reportage-like descriptions of the stories are absurd, funny and sarcastic. Salmela uses innovative methods and works playfully with characters’ parallel trains of thoughts, uses graphics, changes fonts, underlines dynamics of the story.

The novel was published last year in Finland and it became very popular. “Antti Hero is a new stream of an intelligent, unpredictable novel – it is a mirror on the wall everyone can look into on their own responsibility.”