Daughters of the World

”We were more or less orphans, and we decided to more or less save the world.”

The Daughters of the World is a brave utopia set in The Earth Home, where people are equal, nature is healing, and capitalism has been smashed. The journey of five girls is a mirage of an adventure novel, a modern take on friendship and a visionary study on a better world.

They meet at the Harmony Camp for the Lonely. Lise-Lotte’s parents were taken by Nunezia fever, Kaia is grieving for her family, and Ritva is pissed off by The Earth Home’s hypocritical atmosphere. Zerinda’s brain is torn by her ancestress’ memories from the edge of the apocalypse, and she’s not sure whether she still holds the ownership of her mind. Joselina’s brother has died in an attack of mysterious mechanical insects, and together the five girls set out to find the truth. Fighting and dancing, they are lead on by the mystery, through the wonders of The Earth Home.

Enoranta’s vision of the future is dazzling in it’s life force, restoring the reader’s ability to dream.

Daughters of the World was nominated for the Topelius Prize 2023. It received the Young Aleksis Prize 2023 and the Anni Swan Medal in 2024.

Caption

”Our historiography is crowded with visionaries that have invented brave new world orders, implemented them by force or dreamt about them silently by attic windows. Some people say the world is a machinery of unpredictable irrationality. Benevolent ideas have had disastrous consequences, and the roots of new civilisations have emerged from beneath the most horrendous opression. Some say that the world, or at least the history of humankind, is a predictable system with eras running in cycles from destruction to flourish, destruction to flourish. Human beings are selfish, power-seeking, violent animals that are easily corrupted. This is what has been claimed in the world of private ownership following the invention of agriculture, a world that has never been equally shared between all living creatures and where one has been forced to either fight or numb oneself to survive. Human beings are altruistic animals motivated by love, that thrive when working for the benefit of others. This is what people started to claim while raising the building blocks of the Earth Home, and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, to a large extent.”

 

Reviews

”The idealism in the novel is delightfully sincere and shameless, it recognizes the danger of ranting and charges towards such danger with a joyous laugh. – – …The Daughters of the World, a brave utopia that would serve well in the hands of all kinds of leaders of the world.”

– Arla Kanerva, Helsingin Sanomat newspaper

”Daughters of the World – – confirms her already phenomenal skill as a creator of whole, intact worlds. Enoranta seamlessly weaves together questions of egalitarian social systems, consumerist capitalism and the regeneration of nature and species diversity. At a time when life on the brink of ecocatastrophe brings much hopelessness and sadness, Enoranta makes us look at today’s world differently and at the same time encourages us to strive for a different kind of future.”

– Jury statement of the Anni Swan Medal, IBBY Finland

”The utopia of the Earth Home is distant, yet at the same time realistic enough to be believable. The protagonists’ journey unfurls the world to the reader and at the same time says a lot about accepting oneself and others, about the finiteness of natural resources and the infiniteness of love. The only bad thing about the novel is that the world it promises isn’t – yet – true.”

– Joonas Riekkola, Savon Sanomat newspaper

”The novel is a description of a future world, where the problems of climate crisis and polluted environment have been solved. This kind of optimism is really called for in speculative fiction right now.”

– Niina Tolonen, Tähtivaeltaja magazine

”Enoranta has built her utopia to be a place I would like to try and live in. I read the novel lingering, savouring, wishing I could stay on it’s pages and rest for a while longer. – – …one of the most refreshing novels published in the recent years.”

– Mia Myllymäki, Kosmoskynä web magazine

”Enoranta is one of the best genre authors in Finland today, and Daughters of the World is no exception to her work. Seemingly a YA book, the novel can be recommended to anyone, especially since utopia depictions this succesful have rarely been published.”

– Marianne Leikomaa, Portti Science Fiction Magazine

”The Daughters of the World is a novel that exudes life and love, and gives hope for a better future.”
– Venla Virta, Hämeen Sanomat newspaper