Seitsemän veljestä (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈsei̯tsemæn ˈʋeljestæ]; literally translated The Seven Brothers, or The Brothers Seven in Douglas Robinson's 2017 translation) is the first and only novel by Aleksis Kivi, the national author of Finland. It is widely regarded as the first significant novel written in Finnish and by a Finnish-speaking author, and is considered a real pioneer of Finnish realistic folklore. Some people still regard it as the greatest Finnish novel ever written, and in time it has even gained the status of a "national novel of Finland". The deep significance of the work for Finnish culture has even been quoted internationally, and in a BBC article by Lizzie Enfield, for example, which describes Kivi's Seitsemän veljestä as "the book that shaped a Nordic identity."
Kivi began writing the work in the early 1860s and wrote it at least three times, but no manuscript has survived. The work was largely created while Kivi lived in Siuntio's Fanjurkars with Charlotta Lönnqvist. It was first published in 1870 in four volumes, but the publication of a one-volume novel did not happen until 1873, a year after the author's death.
