Mariia Niskavaara
Author of Esther, the Butcher
Mariia Niskavaara (b. 1988) first trained as a film director at the Aalto University of Art and Design, but transitioned to Comparative Literature and Art History. Mariia’s background in film studies is evident in her visual writing - Esther and her world first came to her as a vision. Mariia is currently writing her PhD thesis exploring the aesthetics of meat, the body and decay.
Esther, The Butcher
Ester, teurastaja, Kosmos, October 2025, 181ppMariia Niskavaara's debut Esther, the Butcher will soon be published in 30+ countries, including the World English publications in February 2027.
All day, Esther slaughters. It’s the only job she’s ever done; it’s the only job she wants to do.For Esther, life is simple and beautiful. She has no dreams of leaving the place she was born, an industrial town dwarfed by a massive meat factory. As a baby, Esther was weaned on aspic and sausage, and as a teenager she loved nothing more than working at her parents’ butcher shop, digging her hand into a tub of freshly ground minced meat and imagining her own body as flesh that someone might one day touch as lovingly. As an adult, Esther’s life falls perfectly into place: she obtains her dream job in the Factory’s slaughterhouse, then snags a middle-class husband, an artificial inseminator of sows at the town’s pig farm. There is only one thing missing: a child.Esther longs deeply for the time when she will create flesh of her own flesh, but try as the couple do, she does not fall pregnant. Parental pressure mounts, and Esther’s small town pulses with rumor as her coworkers stare openly at her unswelling belly. But Esther’s body is hiding secrets of which even she is unaware—her flesh is not weak, and her spirit even stronger.Influenced by Franz Kafka and with the freshness and intensity of Sayaka Murata and Olga Tokarczuk, Mariia Niskavaara takes her place as one of the most exciting young voices to come out of Europe in recent years. A tender master of the surreal, she shows us the extreme reality of womanhood under contemporary capitalism and asks the thought-provoking question: are we really anything more than meat?
Worldwide publication
Worldwide publication dates for Esther, the Butcher:Finland: 06.10.2025 order hereLatvia: 12.10.2026 order here
Slovakia: 20.10.2026 order here
Denmark: 29.01.2027 pre-order!
United Kingdom: 18.02.2027 pre-order!
United States: 23.02.2027 pre-order!
Canada: 23.02.2027 pre-order!
Germany: 24.02.2027 pre-order!Not yet announced:Brazil
Catalan
Croatia
Czechia
Estonia
France
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Lithuania
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovenia
Spain
South Korea
Sweden
Turkey
Ukraine
Next appearances by Mariia Niskavaara:
23.10.2026 14:00 at Helsinki Book Fair Esther the Butcher's author Mariia Niskavaara, the novel's English translator Kate Sotejeff-Wilson, and literary agent Toomas Aasmäe (Bonnier Rights Finland) in conversation, interviewed by Ville Blåfield, program director of the Helsinki Book Fair. - in Finnish
7.11.2026 11:30 at Riga Book Fair in Draugu telpa (Friends Corner) of Latvian National Library Mariia Niskavaara's Latvian publisher Renate Punka from Jānis Roze in conversation with the author and the translator Maima Grīnberga about the sources of inspiration and the skyrocketing international success of Esther the Butcher. - In English
Contact
Mariia Niskavaara can be reached through her literary agency Bonnier Rights Finland. Reach out to Mariia Niskavaara by clicking the button below.