Joel Lehtonen

Joel Lehtonen was born in Sääminki on November 27, 1881, to an impoverished single mother and raised by adoptive parents. Experiencing the bitter social chasms of Finnish rural life, Lehtonen became an acute, unsentimental observer of human foibles.

His 1920 magnum opus Putkinotko, chronicling a single hot summer day in the life of a lazy moonshining crofter and his destitute family, delivered a devastating, compassionate autopsy of Finnish rural society following the 1918 Civil War. Suffering from agonizing rheumatoid arthritis and depression, he ended his life in 1934.