The Fight Back: Anti-Larsson Writers

Abstract

Inevitably, Stieg Larsson’s all-conquering success has ignited a challenging critical response, notably in terms of perceptions of the late writer as an accurate commentator on Scandinavian politics and society (though Larsson would no doubt have pointed to his non-fiction as his real analysis of Nordic mores). The reaction of such writers as the sometime-London-based Swedish crime novelist Håkan Nesser (and others) against Larsson form a different political perspective (with a notably less dyspeptic — though clear-eyed — view of Swedish society, though, in fact, Nesser writes about a carefully unnamed country); the duo of criminologist and ex-criminal Roslund and Hellström also offer different analyses of Swedish society to such writers as Larsson.