The Colonel's Wife.

In "The Colonel’s Wife," an elderly woman reflects on her life, deeply intertwined with the shadows of fascism and Nazism, as she nears its twilight. The narrative vividly captures her journey from a child of the right-wing Finnish Whites to an adult enmeshed in the dark political movements of her time, revealing her authoritarian streak and profound connection to nature. Her complex character unfolds as she recounts her youth, her involvement with, and eventual marriage to, a Colonel thirty years her senior—a relationship that deepens amidst the backdrop of World War II, as they mingle with Nazi elites and retreat to the northern wilderness. As her marriage and the war spiral into darkness, the novel, through Rosa Liksom's paradoxically beautiful prose, presents a character whose sexual liberation and political sympathies are as compelling as they are repugnant, mirroring the tensions of our own political era.