Juha K. Tapio

Who is Juha K. Tapio?

Juha K. Tapio is a Finnish writer and critic whose only novel, Frankensteinin muistikirja was awarded the Helsingin Sanomat Literary Prize for the best Finnish first novel of 1996. The novel is a metafiction written as a kind of sequel to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus.

Tapio's novel begins in Paris in the 1920s, where two American expatriate writers, Gertrud Stein and Ernst Hemingway come across a strange manuscript, which appears to be a diary written by the monster created by Victor Frankenstein. They discover that the writer of the diary is currently living in Paris under the name Frank Stein. Their curiosity aroused, they arrange a meeting with Mr. Stein, who appears to be a rather amiable elderly gentleman, if somewhat rough-hewn in outward appearance - there is nothing monstrous about him at first sight.

The "monster" then tells the two writers his own story after having fled his father's castle; here the narrative mirrors the tale-within-tale structure of Shelley's original, inserting the monster's narrative into the main frame of the plot as a series of diary excerpts, whereas Shelley's novel uses a letter-novel format.