As the author of three dark and violent crime novels, Stieg Larsson was at home in a dysfunctional landscape of simmering resentments and rancorous family secrets. But the Swedish writer cannot have foreseen how, almost five years to the day after his death, the novels’ success would lead to bitterness and paranoia in his own family.
In one of the most spectacular and unlikely ascents in recent literary history, Larsson, largely unknown before his sudden death at 50, has become one of the most successful writers in the world. About 20-million of his books, the first of which was published as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, have been sold to date in Europe alone. Last year he was the world’s second-bestselling author after Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner. His estate is thought to be worth more than £20-million.
But because he and the architect, Eva Gabrielsson, his partner of 32 years, never married and he died without making a legally binding will, the proceeds have defaulted to his blood relations, provoking controversy in Sweden and displeasure from Gabrielsson.
A will dating from 1977, which was unwitnessed and therefore non-binding, expressed a wish for his assets to be left to a local branch of the Communist Workers’ League.
In the latest acrimonious episode Erland and Joakim Larsson, the author’s father and brother, made Gabrielsson a public offer of £1,75-million last week to settle the dispute. Gabrielsson’s response was curt: “You don’t solve these things via media. It is so low. My lawyer will have to answer any further questions.”
She has accused the Larsson family of seeking to “make money from someone who can’t defend himself”, saying it would make her partner “absolutely furious”, and accusing Erland and Joakim of not being part of Stieg’s life while he was alive.
But Erland Larsson said it was he who had insisted that his son write “something commercial” and that the Millennium trilogy was the result. Gabrielsson, he said, had resisted moves to come to a settlement.
The acrimony over Larsson’s estate surfaced a few months after his death from a heart attack in November 2004, while working as a dogged but comparatively obscure journalist, editing a Trotskyist periodical and an anti-fascist magazine, Expo, which he founded. He had, it emerged, left the completed manuscripts for a series of three crime novels, the first of which was published the following year.
The surprise success of the novel has led, almost inevitably, to feverish interest from Hollywood, with rumours that George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese are among those interested in bringing the character of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist to the screen. Most intriguing remains Larsson’s laptop computer, which, according to Gabrielsson, contains a sequel to the trilogy. In 2005 she refused an offer by the family to hand over the computer in exchange for the author’s half of the flat they shared. There is speculation that outlines for six further novels are also contained in the laptop. — ® Guardian News & Media 2009
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest are published by Maclehose Press
A VERY SWEDISH GLOBAL PHENOMENON
On a French beach this summer, almost every sunbather regardless of nationality was reading one of Stieg Larsson’s three novels in one of their numerous translations.
This phenomenon is improbable, given the project’s many obstacles. The author died before the first book even went through the editorial process and, in most such cases, readers are left with a tantalising sense of the polish further drafts might have provided.
Although Swedish crime fiction already had a high reputation — through the Wallander novels of Henning Mankell — Larsson has achieved a global level of acclaim and sales that are very unusual for a story not originally written in English. My theory for the phenomenon is that Larsson took a genre that has generally sold to men — thrillers turning on technology and conspiracies — and feminised it through a highly unusual central character: Lisbeth Salander, who combines the brain of Sherlock Holmes with the martial arts skills of Lara Croft. It’s also likely that the history of Sweden — where an experiment in liberal government was compromised by violence and corruption — resonates with readers in other countries. And the author’s sudden death — although family and fans accept that he was killed by smoking rather than a smoking gun — adds to the sense that the novels contain urgent and dangerous truths.
And yet perhaps the books’ triumph should not have been so great a surprise. It is an oddity of Swedish culture that a country often easily ignored suddenly throws up an example in a certain field — Abba, Björn Borg, Volvo — which proves to be a world-beater.
Larsson is the latest example.
The sadness is the question that always underlies a reader’s relationship with a favoured author — what will they write next? — cannot apply here, although suggestions that Larsson’s laptop may have contained outlines for many more books are one possible reason why his estate has been so bitterly contested. — Mark Lawson ® Guardian News & Media 2009