Children of the Cave: A Fascinating Finnish Novel of Ideas

In Children of the Cave, Finnish writer Virve Sammalkorpi imagines an encounter between a group of explorers and some strange creatures living in a cave in the remote forests of northern Russia that look like animals but also have some very human characteristics.

Will the explorers see these strange, small creatures as human children or as wild animals? And how does that affect how they treat them? Will they treat them kindly or with violence? Will they be intrigued by their difference or threatened by it?

These are just some of the ideas driving Virvee Sammalkorpi’s fascinating novel. I say that the ideas drive the novel because that’s how it seemed to me as I was reading it. This is not a novel that relies on a page-turning plot or sparkling prose or even particularly interesting characters to draw you through. It’s a novel of ideas. It’s about how we treat animals, how we treat each other, how we respond to difference.

On his blog A Writer’s Life, British novelist Andrew Blackman shares book reviews, insights into the writing process and the latest literary news, as well as listing short story contests with a total of more than $250,000 in prize money.