Moominpappa at Sea
core novel 1965 The Moomins
Record
| Original title | Pappan och havet |
|---|---|
| First published | 1965 |
| Original language |  SV |
| First English translation | 1966 |
| Translator | Kingsley Hart |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.22 (12,855 ratings, collected 2026-10-06) |
| Page count | 224 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780312608927 |
| Internal chronology | 8 |
Synopsis
Moominpappa feels superfluous in Moominvalley, where every problem has already been solved, so one evening he takes the family, Moominmamma, Moomintroll and Little My, to sea in search of a purpose: the lighthouse on a rock at the edge of the map, abandoned by a keeper no one will talk about. On the bleak island the roles the family has always played come loose. Moominpappa tries to master the sea and the lighthouse's dead lamp and understand the fisherman who lives at the point; Moominmamma, homesick, paints the valley on the lighthouse wall and walks into her garden; Moomintroll meets the sea-horses who will not notice him and keeps a secret nightly appointment with the Groke, who follows the family's lamp across the water. A darker, more adult novel than its predecessors, written as Jansson's own family changed.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Moomins
- Series: The Moomins core; position 8 of 9 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Tove Jansson
Notes
- From the series record (The Moomins): Tove Jansson's nine Moomin books (1945-1970), written in Swedish in Finland and illustrated by the author: the Moomin family of Moominvalley and their friends, from the comet, the Hobgoblin's hat and the flooded theatre of the early comedies to the winter, the sea and the empty house of the darker late novels.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Moomins: position 8 of 9: previous Tales from Moominvalley (1962) · next Moominvalley in November (1970)
Sources
- Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moominpappa_at_Sea
- https://margins.app/-/l/e2c97f7ab997481dbcd3fb0076881acd
- Sage Library System catalogue
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.