Eeva Kilpi’s experimental erotic novel Tamara is far more than a fine piece of erotic writing. It is a refreshingly unfashionable approach to love in its fullest sense; it is about the concern of one human being for another, and about respect for others, however emotionally or physically deprived they may be. Tamara is the first Finnish love novel in which the pysical aspect of love is described alongside with the spiritual and moral aspects. The narrator is a paralyzed man who is capable of unconditional love. The subject of his love and his life partner is a sexually active woman, who offers him an erotic fantasy and brings him pleasure and satisfaction by telling him about her experiences in detail. Despite their unusual relationship, these lovers bear moral responsibility for one another. The reader is gradually led to discover that the novel is not the mere description of the existence of a distraught woman in search of physical love, but the expression of a fierce desire for the emancipation of the female psyche. “At last, a love novel,” wrote the Danish author Carsten Jensen of this book. With this first Finnish erotic novel Eeva Kilpi attacks (and not without humour), puritanism, hypocrisy and prejudice, everything that that makes life painful and makes us feel guilty and claims for women the right to emotions and to sexuality. Tamara was a sensation when it was published in 1972. Tamara has proved to be a sustainable work of art. It is considered a modern classic in Finland.