Searching Outside Scandinavia

Following up on Jessica’s last post about the difficulty of casting Lisbeth Salander, I’ve got my own quick note on the Stieg Larsson craze. As this article in The New York Times notes, “the series is seemingly at an end just at the moment when the public’s appetite for Mr. Larsson’s brand of Scandinavian mayhem is at its peak”; as a result, “Publishers and booksellers are in a rush to find more Nordic noir.”

My boyfriend, who hasn’t read the Larsson books yet, and I were discussing this last night. I had mentioned recommending the Larsson to a friend who had read Henning Mankell’s most recent novel, and told my boyfriend about the Times article.

“So they’re looking for the next Stieg Larsson,” he said.

“Yes.”

“But why does he have to be Scandinavian?”

Why indeed? I laughed, but then suggested, after a moment of thought, that I thought the next Larsson might be Latin American. The exotic locale, the moodiness of the literature, and the rich history of crime and politics—it seemed possible. And that’s when my boyfriend mentioned Roberto Bolaño.

Readers: this idea makes a lot of sense.

Our book club read 2666 last fall, and a few comparisons had been made then. But let’s think about this for a moment. What do the Millennium trilogy and 2666 have in common?

Millennium trilogy
serial killings
a more conspirational context for those killings (Lisbeth Salander vs. the Sapo)
author’s preoccupation with and political statement about violence against women
a main character who is a journalist
an enormous cast of supporting and main characters
divided into somewhat arbitrary parts (where the last two books seem like one long book)
bleak setting (the frozen wastelands of Sweden)
published posthumously, unfinished

2666
serial killings
a more conspirational context for those killings (women enslaved to drug cartels)
author’s preoccupation with and political statement about violence against women
a main character who is a journalist
an enormous cast of supporting and main characters
divided into somewhat arbitrary parts (where the “Part About the Crimes” feels like its own book)
bleak setting (the desert bordering Ciudad Juarez)
published posthumously, unfinished

It seems to me that what the Millennium trilogy offers doesn’t have much to do with its taking place in Sweden—aside from the long passages on coffee, sandwiches, and Ikea furniture. What it does offer might be subject to debate; many would argue that its strongest and most compelling feature is Lisbeth Salander (2666 notably lacks such a strong female character). 2666, on the other hand, is distinctly more literary, significantly more heartbreaking, easily more beautifully written.

But Stieg Larsson and Roberto Bolaño are united by plenty of other things, including everything in the above lists. They were both former journalists and left-wing activists who participated in foreign disputes, Bolaño working for Salvador Allende in Chile and Larsson supporting Eritrean rebels in Ethiopia. In their books, they both work very hard to capture place, even when those places are empty and inhospitable. They both manage to write books that succeed as mysteries while investigating questions of politics, prejudice, and the role of a writer in society. And both intensely evoke specific moods in their books: nervy and methodical in Larsson’s books, sultry and subtle in 2666.

So for those “finished with all three books and pleading for something similar,” I’d suggest not another trip to Iceland, Norway, or Sweden, but one to Mexico—it's a reading experience to move and thrill even the hungriest of Larsson devotees.