Literary Helsinki: a city of leisure and light, divided along the fault lines of gender, class and language; a dizzying and dazzling threshold of modernity; alienating, mesmerizing and endearing. This first monograph to examine experiences of Helsinki in literature written in Finnish shows that rich descriptions of urban life have formed an integral part of Finnish literature from the late nineteenth century onward. Based on an analysis of more than sixty novels and collections of short stories, it tells the naturally evolving story of how Helsinki was experienced in literature.