Retelling Salome: Asko Sahlberg's Herodes

The article presents an analysis on the retelling of the story of the Princess Salome in a contemporary Finnish novel, Herodes (2013) by Asko Sahlberg. In the analysis, Salome’s story is considered as an outlandish narrative of an outlandish character that has interested people through history, and especially in the modern era. Sahlberg’s narrative of Salome is contextualized within some of the most known versions of Salome’s story such as the Gospels, and the play of Oscar Wilde. Eventually, the aim is to point out how and to what ends the rewriting of the story of Salome is done in this novel.