2010:1

A week into 2010, an analysis of bestseller lists from Europe’s seven biggest book markets reveals that Stieg Larsson, late author of the Millennium Trilogy, was the top-selling writer across the continent in 2009. The Top Ten also included Camilla Läckberg and Henning Mankell. Just inside the doors of a UK high-street branch of W H Smith, a Millennium display trumpets ‘read the books everybody’s talking about!’ Publishers from firms small and large talk of heading to the a Gothenburg Book Fair (see Laurie Thompson’s lively account of last autumn’s Fair in this issue).

By March, the travel section of The Times is devoting two pages to the ‘Secrets of Stieg’s Stockholm’, and no less than four books about Larsson are in preparation for the English-language market. The Swedish film of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo goes on UK general release, and Hollywood sits up and takes notice. The Independent on Sunday runs a long article by Kate Youde, bringing in other rising stars such as Håkan Nesser, Johan Theorin and Mari Jungstedt. The compilers of the popular ‘Euro Crime’ website find themselves inundated with translated Swedish crime novels to review, and there is anecdotal evidence from publishers’ sales reps that booksellers are demanding only Nordic crime.

Swedish crime fiction has gone mainstream. What is its fascination? Gloomy Viking protagonists in frozen, island landscapes, and the darkest of crimes in the shadow of the collapse of the welfare state have been cited. But don’t we have our own broodingly disintegrating fictional detectives, broken society, and evil murder plots? Leading crime fiction reviewer Barry Forshaw perhaps puts his finger on it when he says that for us, Sweden is sufficiently the same, yet sufficiently different. We are all ‘complaining people in a cold climate’, he suggested at the recent, packed discussion evening, ‘Crimes of the Millennium’, at the Swedish Ambassador’s London residence.

What impact is all this having on the uptake of literary works from Sweden? The issue is addressed for us here by Paul Engles in his survey of the current publishing scene. We also present the latest in our series highlighting other European countries: Paul Berf describes Germany’s love affair with Swedish literature, led by, but not confined to, its crime fiction.

In the first SBR crime fiction special since 2001, we have selected some top-quality, genre-broadening authors still largely undiscovered in the English-speaking world. Matchless storyteller Kerstin Ekman came to prominence here with Blackwater in 1995, but much of her superb writing remains to be translated. The intelligent thrillers of Arne Dahl have been on SBR’s radar for some time, but it is only recently that two Dahl titles have been acquired by a US publisher. Bestselling Viveca Sten and Finland-Swedish crime reporter Staffan Bruun complete the line up. Enjoy a voyage of discovery!