Olausen, Homolulu - Short queer stories

Homolulu - Queer Short Stories is a collection of 30 stories about the ordinary life of ordinary queer folks in Finland. Harald Olausen writes in Finnish, Swedish and English and in 2015, his poem collection Gay Poems got nominated for the Stonewall Book Award in two different categories. The award is considered the Nobel Prize in Literature of the gay scene. His first book of queer-themed short stories, Egyptin prinssi ja muita homonovelleja (“The Prince of Egypt and other gay short stories”) (2012), was praised by one critic as an unashamed tribute to the desires of the flesh and a grueling trip into the delightfully twisted spiritual life of a man who has borne the load of being different for his entire life: “The stories in this w ork are wide-ranging and deliberately lewd. The length of the sentences and the tightness of their layout makes the reader run out of breath at first. Attentive reading, however, reveals that this jungle of words holds an incredible amount of secret wisdom and references to other works. It is marvellous that a book such as this has been written.” Another critic found the book to contain several clever points about the problems of current norms. Olausen's literary gifts that first shone in the Finnish edition of Gay Poems (2011) flashed small lights with which to find hidden pearls: “Small, incredibly beautiful flashes of human destinies in the grip of homoerotic feelings, reminding more of prose poetry than short stories - they show that Olausen has much to give as an artist who follows his own way.