An unlikely hero in the coldest war

Fiction: The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles By Roy Jacobsen, translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw John Murray, 200pp. £12.99War always war. No matter how often poets and songwriters appear to attempt otherwise, few love stories ever succeed in rewriting life as definitively as war has done, and continues to do with murky insistence.

Most of the greatest fiction yet written draws on the theme of the world at war, it is the enduring test for humankind, somehow overshadowing even natural disasters such as flood and hurricane - no doubt because war shouldn't have to happen. But it does - as long as man walks the planet, there will be war.

Norwegian writer Roy Jacobsen's remarkable little tale, The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles, looks to Finland, a country invariably overlooked in the literature of the second World War.

But Finland, capitalising on the Bolshevik revolution and gaining independence from Russia in 1919 under Mannerheim, also fought its war, the so called Winter War, between late 1939 and early 1940. The Finnish governmenthad refused Soviet demands for bases. So the Soviets invaded on three fronts. The world admired the courage of the Finnish resistance, but did little else. Initially, the Finns, superior skiers, out-manoeuvred Soviet forces on the frozen lakes, across the Gulf of Finland and through the forests. After 15 weeks, Soviet might won out and Finland was forced to accept peace on Stalin's terms, losing territory to the east as well as the port of Viipuri.

Jacobsen looks at this chapter of Finnish history. His approach to the history is subtle, almost casual - he never makes this book top-heavy with research. Instead it unfolds through the eyes of a witness, who may or may not be all that reliable.

Jacobsen also makes inspired use of the common enemy: the relentless cold. The vicious freezing temperatures dominate this novel, and throughout the telling the characters are seen tensed and almost misshapen, at the mercy of the numbingly low temperatures. At the heart of the narrative is Timo who tells us what happened. But this is an unusual narrative, and he is obviously unusual, but he never really tells us why and there is no one else to fill in the gaps, all of which makes this strange, impressively understated little novel even more satisfying.

"Suomussalmi was set ablaze on 7 December," announces Timo, "after all four thousand inhabitants had been evacuated, except for me, I was born here, had lived here all my life and couldn't imagine living anywhere else - so when I became aware of a figure in a white uniform standing in front of me, reading from a piece of paper and telling me I had to get out, I dug my heels into the snow and refused to budge." What is to follow is pretty much contained in that simple statement: "I dug my heels into the snow and refused to budge." Timo, the logger, is like that, stubborn and determined. He doesn't say it, but his actions more than suggest it. Everyone else leaves the village. Antti, the grocer, with whom Timo has some form of working relationship, advises him to leave: "Come on. Timo, they kill everyone, whether they know them or not. This is war."

IT MAKES NO difference. Timo is not leaving, although he does send Kavi, his beloved horse, off with Antti. And so Timo tells the story. While most of the village burns, the townspeople having deliberately set it on fire, a few houses are safe and Timo is intent on protecting them. He may not say much, yet he says a great deal. Timo, a loner in possession of a farm left to him by his dead parents, may well be the village idiot - something has set him apart. Early in the narrative he reveals, quite in passing, that Antti - who gives him supplies - and also pays Timo for the wood he cuts - "also felt sorry for me". This remark is immediately followed by "most people in the district feel sorry for me, unless my appearance annoys them or they make fun of me for some other reason."

This candour shapes the character - and characterisation - of Timo, who appears to know his place in the world: " . . . the same people who feel sorry for me one minute often make fun of me the next, as if their compassion wears them down; one day they call me an idiot and the next they give me milk or pork, I don't often get both at the same time, I'm the kind of person who gets bits at a time . . . ". Just when it appears the narrative may become a story of one man's battle against life itself, the novel instead settles into an adventure story as told by Timo, an individual who is self-contained, possibly autistic, certainly devoid of ego, and who nevertheless embraces his chance to take charge. As Timo remarks to one man, a Russian who has lost everything, "I had no family, but I had a farmstead". Timo soon finds himself in the company of a small group of men, each with his own problems. There are Jews and there are Russians, a pair of brothers and a despondent school teacher. The Russians are surrounded by Finns. Suddenly Timo realises that he could be seen as a traitor. Slowly, carefully, as if he is sitting in a chair, recounting the story, Timo, the most unlikely of heroes, gives his account, and succeeds in conveying the various shifts and setbacks that occur along the way. It is quite a tale, and Jacobsen has told it through the experiences of a narrator possessed of singular lucidity. Near its close he recalls that, "Two men headed east towards the Soviet border, home, and two limping Jews went north-west, towards Norway or Sweden or wherever their hopes and strength might take them".

The four are men with whom he had lived and survived alongside for a while. But such is the unsettling magic of this novel. Timo is as detached as he is involved. But finally he has enough and the task is left to another voice to describe how Timo responded to the return of the villagers and the story he is left to deal with. Many of the finest story tellers seal their art with a sting, and Jacobsen introduces the one difficulty the resourceful Timo is unable to deal with - doubt. It is not so much a story of miracles but of tests, and Timo faces many tests and ultimately the injustice of being overlooked. First published in Norway in 2005, this is a daunting, traditional narrative which asserts itself from page one and, like the winter cold, refuses to relax its hold.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times