Bazar claims damages from Sofi Oksanen for breach of contract

Bazar Kustannus Ltd claims for damages from author Sofi Oksanen for unlawful termination of a publishing contract related to a new literary work. In addition, a Swedish affiliate company of Bazar Kustannus Ltd, Bazar Förlag AB, claims for damages from Oksanen for breach of contract. The Bazar companies have initiated proceedings in the Helsinki district court with regard to these disputes. 

In 2005 the Nordic publishing group Bazar and author Sofi Oksanen entered into a contractual arrangement comprising several publishing contracts. As part of the arrangement, in the Bazar group’s view, the author assigned to Bazar Kustannus Ltd the publishing rights to Oksanen’s next full-length novel, tentatively titled Ranskalainen päärynä. Subsequent to entering into this contract, Oksanen has published several works in Finland without offering the novel referred to in the contract to Bazar Kustannus Ltd.

In the initiated legal proceedings Bazar requests that the district court confirms that Oksanen has committed a breach of contract by failing to fulfill her contractual obligations. Additionally, Bazar claims for damages from Oksanen based on the aforementioned breach of contract. The parties have not been able to settle the dispute amicably.

As part of the same contractual arrangement Bazar Förlag AB agreed to publish Swedish translations of Oksanen’s works Stalinin lehmät (Stalin’s Cows) and Baby Jane (Baby Jane) which had previously been published only in Finland. In late 2011 Oksanen notified Bazar Förlag AB that she was cancelling the publishing contracts pertaining to these works. Bazar Förlag AB holds that Oksanen did not have justifiable grounds for cancelling the contracts and consequently requires Oksanen to comply with obligations set out in the contracts and claims for damages for breach of contract.

Bazar Kustannus Ltd publishes the pocket book version of Stalinin lehmät in Finland.  

Further information

Bazar Kustannus Ltd, Publishing Director Ritva Holmström, tel: +358 (0)44 039 9013, e-mail: ritva @ bazarkustannus.fi

Bazar Kustannus Ltd is a part of the Nordic Bazar Publishers group. In Finland Bazar Kustannus publishes primarily translated literature, but its goal is also to make Finnish literature better known in other Nordic countries. www.bazarkustannus.fi

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