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David Lagercrantz after 'Millenium': "You don't have to write with the elite in mind"

2022-05-28T03:56:27.634Z


The Swedish writer, author of the last three novels in the saga created by Stieg Larsson, is starting a new series of police novels starring an aristocrat and a young detective of Chilean descent


The Swedish writer David Lagercrantz (Stockholm, 59 years old), accompanied by his agent, greets affably at the doors of a hotel in the center of Stockholm, and with undisguised enthusiasm comments on the planned plan: walk through the center to his house and there drink a few glasses of sparkling wine.

In his apartment, he warns, there will be about 40 journalists that his wife has invited on the occasion of a conference that has nothing to do with him.

“But we will be able to talk”, he assures, amused by the confusion, the crossing of agendas and the party perspective.

There is a touch of eccentricity in the extroverted and successful Lagercrantz's poise.

His biography of soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the best-selling book in the history of his country, a work that allowed him to describe what he calls "the new Sweden".

Later, he was commissioned to continue the

Millennium saga,

by Stieg Larsson, a project that he embodied in three novels (

What does not kill you makes you stronger, The man who chased his shadow

and

The girl who lived twice

), from which he came out more than successful.

“That was crazy.

They contacted me from the publisher and the first meetings were secret”, he says, and recalls the editor of the American label Knopff, the legendary Sonny Mehta, who gave him his support when he was commissioned to continue Larsson's books that had been published posthumously.

“The first

Millennium

book I wrote came out in the middle of the refugee crisis in 2015, and yet the novel was on the front page of the newspapers.

It was very controversial.

Larsson was working class, I wasn't.

There were some reviews that weren't positive, but that was a boost and I survived."

Dressed in a checked coat and a striped suit that match perfectly, he walks with a light step pointing out some of the settings of his new novel,

Obscuritas

(Destino publishes it on June 1 in Spanish), the book with which Lagercrantz starts a new detective series starring a curious couple: the young policewoman of Chilean origin Micaela Vargas and the manic-depressive aristocrat Hans Rekke.

“She is tough, she comes from a difficult neighborhood.

He, however, comes from privilege and can afford to be vulnerable.

To write you have to see yourself inside the story”, he says as he crosses the platform of Östermalm, the central subway station where Vargas's character saves Rekke from suicide.

During the promotional tour for the latest installment of

Milennium,

"immersed in that manic and depressive phase of doing interviews all the time", and having to answer the repeated question of what was the next thing he was going to write, he thought of meeting again somehow with Sherlock Holmes, his "first literary love", someone capable of unraveling complex matters through details.

"I didn't want to be Stieg Larsson forever," he ends with a laugh, pointing to the distinguished building on Grevgatan where his new fictional hero resides.

With Rekke, the fragile and brilliant protagonist of

Obscuritas

, Lagercrantz shares aristocratic origins.

He comes from a wealthy and well-known family: his grandmother was a countess, his father Olof Lagercrantz, a revered poet, writer and critic, author of a biography of August Strindberg, who went on to run the daily

Dagens Nyheter.

"In my family they had the idea that you could be very successful or suffer from mental illness, something that was not seen as a stigma, but with respect and a certain reverence," he says while walking.

In the novel, Rekke's character says, “They expected us to be above our time, to aim a little higher than everyone else.

If not, we were considered failures.”

Swedish writer David Lagercrantz in Stockholm in 2022. Kajsa Göransson

Lagercrantz began his career writing about crime and happenings in a small newspaper outside of Stockholm.

"My father's fame caused him to be viewed with many prejudices, but I never felt like an intellectual, I had to find my way," he explains, sitting on a balcony of his overwhelming apartment and holding the promised glass of sparkling wine.

“The book I wrote about Ibrahimovic changed my life.

It had a huge impact and gave hope to many young people.

I understood that you should not write with the elite in mind”.

Obscuritas

focuses on the investigation of the crime of an Afghan refugee in Stockholm after he refereed a boys' soccer game in 2003. The secret CIA prisons, Guantánamo and the use of torture are very present themes in this story.

“You need some time perspective to understand, and so I looked back at what was unleashed after 9/11, at the two wars that the United States waged,” he explains.

Music also plays a fundamental role in the plot.

“For the Taliban regime it is a threat, just like the uncovered face of a woman.

Why?

Because both things inspire desire.”

Although the characters of Vargas and Rekke have very different origins and worldviews, they are more united than might seem at first glance.

They have clear tensions with their respective brothers and are familiar with the problem of addictions, in the case of Rekke in the first person.

Vargas is, according to its author, “a young woman who tries to find her identity and rebel”, who grits her teeth at the macho comments of her colleagues at the police station, someone who knows how to fight and does not allow herself to be weakness.

"I wanted to delve into the relationship of two people who come from such different worlds and meet, I wanted the injustice that permeates society to be seen through them," explains the author, and proposes visiting Husby the next morning, the neighborhood of immigrants where her character Micaela grew up.

"Those residing in Husby," writes Lagercrantz in his novel, had "remains of grenades and shrapnel, fragments of what had been broken up far away."

For this reason, Vargas' brother, Simón, says: "I don't need to read the newspapers to find out what has happened in the world, I see it in my neighbors."

Just 10 minutes by metro from the city center, the sixties buildings with balconies and facades painted in soft colors, the well-kept green areas that separate them, the soccer fields where well-equipped children play and the library that is kept in its archives the testimonies of immigrants who have lived in this neighborhood for decades do not suggest Husby as a focus of misery and violence, but rather the materialization of the Nordic welfare state.

There is no graffiti, no paper on the ground, the neighborhood is pedestrianized, with bike lanes.

"A few months ago there were police on every corner because of the shootings between gangs," he says, remembering the riots and shootings that keep the Swedes on edge, although this morning in late April in Husby there is no sign of the agents.

“Immigration here is now more Islamic than Latin American, and the 2015 refugee crisis has caused drastic change and the rise of the far right,” Lagercrantz notes.

He adds that he intends to write four more books on Vargas and Rekke, and is already working on the next one.

Is there anything in Sweden that can explain its writers' penchant for crime and

noir

?

“There is a moral and political tradition, the Anglo-Saxons look for more entertainment in these novels”, she weighs herself.

"Here there is a feeling of security, a certain confidence in the State that makes you fall into the temptation of thinking that perhaps the institutions are not so reliable," she reflects.

“The great mystery of Sweden is the death of Olof Palme and that remains unsolved.

Perhaps these novels that we write are a strange

spin-off

of that wound, ”she concludes just before saying goodbye.

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Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-05-28

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