Finnish novelist and social critic who was an exponent of the modern experimental novel.

Beginning as an “aesthetic” novelist, Kilpi turned to descriptions of 19th-century Finnish island life. In his important novel Alastalon salissa (1933; “In the Parlour at Alastalo”), a work of more than 900 pages, he used interior monologues, long flashback episodes, and exact, detailed description to give an account of the events in a six-hour period. In this work, a group of peasants are portrayed as functioning on a number of simultaneous levels, and their consciousness is meticulously described during their interaction in a parlour. Kilpi uses his experimental technique in a broad, realistic depiction of a timeless, hierarchial social system.