Still on Stieg Larsson

Anders Engwall posted a short comment on this post about Swedish crime fiction, and I post the comment here, too:

Pardon this late comment, but I came across a rather interesting take on Larsson's books today.

http://www.expressen.se/kultur/1.1792588/banala-intriger

If you don't want to exercise your Swedish capabilities, the gist of it is that while the writer can understand somehow why the books sell so well, whe can't for her life understand why they are considered to be among the better ones in the genre. She then points out why she thinks they are rubbish, and the way she describes them is basically how I always suspected them to be.

The last paragraph is perhaps the most interesting. She suspects that the reason for the international success is because poor writing may not translate too well; that somehow stylistic awkwardness is smoothed out when presented in another language.

[Juri here: There's been some talk about the first English translation of Larsson's work being not very successful, so the last comment may not be right on the mark, but let it be said that I haven't been very interested in Larsson's books anyway.]