author
Väinö Airola
1888–1931
A Finnish banker, local civic leader, and novelist, he is remembered today for Keksijän voitto (1922), an early Finnish science-fiction novel built around invention, technology, and political upheaval. His work offers a striking glimpse of how modern ideas and anxieties were entering Finnish fiction in the early 20th century.
1 Audiobook
Keksijän voitto: Romaani
by Väinö Airola
About the author
Born on August 11, 1888, in Kärkölä, Väinö Airola was a Finnish writer whose professional life reached well beyond literature. He studied at the folk high school in Lahti, a commercial school in Kotka, and a forestry technical school in Härnösand, Sweden, before working in the timber trade and later becoming a bank director.
Airola also took part in municipal life, and his career suggests a practical, public-minded figure who wrote from close contact with business and society. He died on September 28, 1931, in Toijala.
His best-known book is Keksijän voitto (1922). The novel has been described as an early example of Finnish science fiction, centering on a gifted inventor and imagining new technologies alongside national and international conflict. That combination of industry, invention, and political tension makes his writing especially interesting to modern readers exploring the roots of speculative fiction in Finland.