Sofi Oksanen has a penchant for difficult subjects. The Finnish-Estonian author established her international reputation with her 2008 novel Purge, which examined sexual violence against women and legacies of the Soviet regime in Estonia. The subjugation of women as part of the complex history of Eastern Europe has been a central theme in her six novels.
Her latest work, Same River, Twice: Putin’s War on Women, is a book-length essay that evolved from a speech delivered to the Swedish Academy in March 2023. Its primary concern is the deterioration of women’s rights under the regime of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
