The article also traces the current wave of Swedish crime writing to a traumatic national event:Are there parallels to be drawn with the Irish experience of another assassination, in this case the murder of investigative journalist Veronica Guerin in 1996 and the subsequent explosion in Irish crime fiction? There’s a significant paper to be written here, o ye students of Ireland.the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, shot dead in Stockholm while walking home from a movie with his wife. Anyone who dismissed crime fiction as trifling might be interested in this passage about the Palme assassination:
“In a way, Sweden has never recovered,” says Swedish author and critic Marie Peterson. “Sweden changed, brutally, on almost every level, but this change was nowhere to be found in literature. No one explored it, analyzed it or wrote stories about it. Except the crime writers, starting with [Henning] Mankell.”
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Swedish Crime Fiction? Now There’s A Turnip For The Books
The rather fine Detectives Beyond Borders interweb yokeybus has a neat link to a fascinating piece on Swedish crime fiction in the Toronto Star, which runneth thusly:
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Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.
Is Ireland becoming the new Sweden?
ReplyDeleteThe Celtic Tiger economic miracle with new wealth for some, but with so many left behind, probably mirrors Swedish society in the 1960s and 1970s.
Both countries have since had massive immigration to what was previously a very homogeneous population. It is all good stuff for the crime fiction afficianado but not so marvellous for the elderly Irish hoping to retire to a rural idyll.