A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2025
"A novel you will not put down. Maybe never."—Richard Ford
With over 250,000 copies sold, an award-winning WWII novel about the heroism of a single Finnish infantry company—and the best sniper the world has ever seen—defending their country against the largest army in the world
Intense, propulsive, and deeply human, The Winter Warriors is an stunning historical novel of Finnish heroism in the face of Soviet invasion.
November 1939: The Soviet Union, the largest army in the world, invades its tiny, relatively defenseless neighbor Finland, just three months after the declaration of World War II. So began what is known as the Winter War. A small makeshift company of soldiers, workers, and farmers must face off against columns of tanks and millions of Stalin's Red Army fighters.
In this propulsive and deeply moving narrative based on the true story of the Finnish infantry division, heroes emerge: the star sniper Simo Häyhä, nicknamed the “White Death”; the young men from farms and villages who meet again on the battlefield to fight for their homes; nurses who must treat old childhood friends. The soldiers go to battle with old guns as their wounds freeze in the unforgiving cold, and yet not only do they resist the Soviet soldiers, but they force the superpower to offer terms for peace only six months later. The Winter Warriors is a testament to the Finnish quality of “sisu”: inner strength and determination which prevails in the face of overwhelming odds.
