“Didn’t that sound like the north was calling us?” Imagined geographies and Cold War legacies in Sofi Oksanen’s Dog Park (Koirapuisto)

Abstract

The article presents a discussion of Finnish-Estonian author Sofi Oksanen’s 2019 novel Dog Park (Koirapuisto), a social and psychological thriller about two Ukrainian women working in the Ukrainian fertility industry, offering surrogacy services to Western clients. The novel explores some of the new modes of exchange and cultural encounter that were established between Ukraine and the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It presents a reflection of the social and human consequences of the transition from communism to capitalism but is also a story of how the legacy of Cold War geopolitics continues to shape European mental geographies and experiences at the intersection of East and West. Drawing on concepts from human geography and postcolonial studies, the article offers a reading of Oksanen’s novel focusing especially on how the novel negotiates these geopolitical shifts as well as the position of the Nordic countries on the changing European map.