At the end of the Grand Duchy of Finland, literature consisted largely of romance and drama, such as novel "The Song of the Blood-Red Flower" (1905) by Johannes Linnankoski (1869–1913), but then Finland gained its independence in 1917 and soon after a civil war broke out. As with other civil wars it was to be depicted many times in literature, as in "" (1919) by Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1888–1964). Sillanpää was a strong leader of literature in the 1930s in Finland and was the first Finnish Nobel Prize winner. The theme was taken up by Väinö Linna (1920–1992), already phenomenally successful because of his novel "The Unknown Soldier" (1954). In this and other cases the very strangeness of the Finnish environment and mentality have been major obstacles to international renown.