Sillanpää, Frans Eemil (fräns ā`mĭl sĭl`länpă'), 1888–1964, Finnish novelist. As a young man Sillanpää studied natural science at Helsinki and came under the influence of an artistic circle that included the composer Sibelius. He soon won acclaim with his short stories and his first novel, Life and Sun (1916). Meek Heritage (1919, tr. 1938) won him recognition as Finland's foremost writer; it described the period of the Finnish civil war of 1917 with sympathy and realism. Fallen Asleep while Young (1931; tr. The Maid Silja, 1933) treats the conflicts of the same era caused by the disintegration of older values. His People in a Summer Night (1934, tr. 1966) concerns the mysteries of nature. Sillanpää was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Sillanpää, Frans Eemil

(born Sept. 16, 1888, Hämeenkyrö, Fin., Russian Empire—died June 3, 1964, Helsinki, Fin.) Finnish novelist. The son of a farmer, he studied natural science but returned to the country to write. Shocked by the Finnish civil war of 1918, he produced his most substantial novel, Meek Heritage (1919), relating how a humble cottager becomes involved with the Red Guards. After several collections of short stories in the late 1920s, he published his best-known work, The Maid Silja (1931), about an old peasant family. People in the Summer Night (1934) is his most polished and poetic novel. In 1939 he became the first Finnish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.