‘He was a difficult man, but brilliant and multifaceted,’ according to his Swedish publisher, Eva Gedin of Norstedts. ‘Many Swedes were aware of his bravery in tackling extremist organisations,’ she told me. ‘He could be infuriating – and he certainly wasn’t afraid of making enemies. But most of his enemies were well chosen; as for his friends and associates, frustration with him might result from the fact that he was clearly asking his body to do more than it could cope with.’
Gedin speaks with a mixture of admiration and regret regarding the late author. ‘He came to my attention via the recommendation of another journalist, who rang me up and said, “You may know about Stieg as an antifascist journalist – but did you know he is also an amazing novelist? You have to read this book!” And so we discovered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
‘When I read it, I told him – on the spot – that we wanted to sign him to a three-book contract. His response was a quiet one; generally speaking, he was a surprisingly quiet, shy person – except in one area. He was boastful about himself only in respect of his amazing work ethic. You were always told – in great detail – how he’d copy-edited his magazine, fired off myriad letters, written several chapters, and generally crammed a week of activity into 24 hours. One could always forgive him all this, as he wasn’t really self-aggrandising.’
In a radio interview for PRI’s The World, Eva Gedin gave some interesting responses concerning the life and death of Stieg Larsson. She talked about first encountering the unpublished manuscripts: ‘We were very excited because we needed a new crime writer, and we could see that we had something really good in our hands.’ Remarking on the steadily growing, viral word of mouth on the books, she noted that, ‘You could sort of hear people talking about Stieg’s book almost everywhere we went – when we went to buy groceries, you could hear people saying “Hey, have you read this new writer Stieg Larsson?”’ Acknowledging that the success of the books was in great part due to the groundbreaking character of Lisbeth Salander, Gedin anatomised the success of this innovative creation: ‘She’s a superhero, something you haven’t seen in crime fiction. She’s such an extraordinary person. Smart… and revengeful.’
Larsson had in fact told Eva Gedin that he had conceived Salander (as mentioned earlier) as a grown-up version of the classic Swedish children’s heroine Pippi Longstocking.
So was Larsson – to those who knew him – a heroic figure? ‘He was the best kind of hero,’ according to Gedin. ‘He simply got on with the job, and never seemed to be after any kind of personal glory. Perhaps some might call taking on some sinister organisations foolhardy but I – and many others – had only admiration for him. Of course, it was obvious that something had to give in terms of his health. Which is not to say that he was self-destructive. Outwardly, even before the success of Dragon Tattoo, he was a man of influence and importance; he charmed the ex-minister of immigration, Mona Sahlin – a woman many considered to be a possible future prime minister of Sweden. And, of course, he lectured on the tactics of far-Right groups in France, Germany – and at Scotland Yard.’
His Swedish and English publishers are agreed that one myth should be squashed: the notion that Larsson barely lived to see the success of his books, albeit not the sales success. ‘He knew he was a success as a writer,’ says Gedin. ‘It was pleasing to those around him to see him quietly savouring the fact that he had made such a success of the second career.’
But, I asked Gedin, what about the other oft-repeated part of the legend concerning Larsson: that his death was somehow suspicious? That the failure of his health was due to some sinister chemical assistance, like the poisoning of the former Russian intelligence officer, Alexander Litvinenko, in London? On this, Eva Gedin is emphatic. ‘Absolutely not! It might help Stieg’s legend if it were true that he was the victim of some kind of poisoning, but frankly there was this almost casually self-destructive element: the massive self-imposed workload, the heavy smoking and so forth. But the fact that his death was not a homicide doesn’t make him any less of a hero. That is exactly what he was.’
Before becoming Editorial Director at Chatto & Windus, Larsson’s UK publisher Christopher MacLehose – who publishes the Millennium books through his own imprint within the Quercus publishing company – was Literary Editor of the Scotsman. He also held down the position of Editor-in-Chief at the publisher William Collins, but his most significant role, and the one in which he produced some of the great literary glories of an illustrious career, was as publisher at Harvill Press. (For the last seven years of his time with the company, the imprint became part of the powerful conglomerate Random House.) Under MacLehose’s authoritative stewardship, Harvill became synonymous with the very best writing from other shores than those of the UK, customarily translated with the greatest skill and sensitivity. Important modern writers published by MacLehose included George Perec, W G Sebald and José Saramago, but particularly innovative were his crime fiction acquisitions, notably Henning Mankell, Fred Vargas and Arnaldur Indridason. These authors represented some of the most intelligent and innovative writing in the field and beautifully complemented such literary giants in the Harvill list as Raymond Carver, Richard Ford and Peter Matthieson.
While maintaining a consistent standard of literary excellence, MacLehose never forgot that the Harvill imprint was founded in the 1940s by Manya Harari and Marjorie Villiers with a view to inaugurating a healthy cultural exchange between the countries of Europe after the Second World War.
The publishing passion which MacLehose demonstrated will not surprise those who have met him: the single-mindedness with which he fights for the authors he believes in has fewer precedents in the publishing world than one might wish, on either side of the Atlantic, and has inspired both gratitude and loyalty from the authors for whom MacLehose has gone in to bat. Concerning Harvill’s continuing success, he said: ‘We left HarperCollins with a substantial part of our backlist intact. So the fuel was there to keep the motor running, as it were. There was also a broad acceptance among young booksellers – and among the public that bought books – that Harvill stood for something: first-class works in whatever language in the world translated into English.’ Speaking to him over the years (which involves looking upwards – he is dauntingly tall), MacLehose has always given me the impression that he provides the best possible advocacy for the authors who have been lucky enough to be published by him.
In an interview for the internet crime fiction website The Rap Sheet, the journalist Ali Karim asked MacLehose how he had discovered Larsson’s work. ‘The English translation of the Millennium Trilogy came from Norstedts, the Swedish publisher,’ MacLehose explained, ‘via a very experienced American translator who was asked [by Norstedts] to translate all three books for a film company, which he did in the remarkable time of 11 months.
‘It needed a certain amount of editorial work, inevitably. And as the translator Steven Murray [working under the pseudonym of Reg Keeland] was now involved in another project, he didn’t have time to do this. It should be said that the trilogy came to me many months after the translator had finished it. Why? Because it needed a great deal of editorial work, but also because there was this feeling “what can you do commercially with a writer who has died?” This I felt was ludicrous – as was: “Come on, what can we do with this? We haven’t got an author!” It is a tragedy in one sense that Stieg Larsson did not see his work published in English, nor see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo reach number four in the New York Times bestseller lists. This is an astonishing achievement for a translated novel. Incidentally, Knopf, who published it in the US, did so brilliantly. I’m frankly grateful it came to us in the form that it did, needing a certain degree of editorial work; otherwise, it would have been bought by somebody else.’
Asked about the Swedish film adaptations, MacLehose drew for comparison on the success of the film adaptations of the work of Ian Fleming. ‘Salander will leave James Bond in her wake. Salander is just so interesting, and she is much more intellectually stimulating than James Bond ever was. She is a woman of so many facets and aspects: the physical, emotional, the history of mental illness, where she stands in Swedish society. And then there are her computer skills, her professional skills as an analyst. She is, of course, not a complete human being, because of her emotional wreckage, but she is utterly fascinating.’
The Millennium Trilogy has been a massive success in the UK for the British independent publisher Quercus, founded by the legendary UK publisher Anthony Cheetham and now run by the energetic and savvy Mark Smith. Christopher MacLehose runs his own imprint within the company, and continues to bring the same innovative publishing skills to bear as he did in his days running the Harvill Press. But how does he compare his current publishing incarnation with the glories of his past career?
‘Nothing will quite compare with my years at Harvill Press, as that was an imprint that was devoted to the translation of pure literature. But we did publish Peter Høeg, Henning Mankell, Fred Vargas and many others who are also considered as European crime writers. However, there is no one quite like the Quercus team. They are young, work flat out all day and all night. I’ll tell you what it’s like: when I left Chatto & Windus and went to Collins, who were then a tremendously vigorous young publishing house, I described it like free-falling downwards, without a parachute. Working with Quercus is like getting out of the aeroplane and suddenly you are moving very fast, very fast indeed, and there is no parachute.’
MacLehose has talked about other much-acclaimed crime novels he has published, such as Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski, and while books such as this will no doubt add lustre to his legacy, there is absolutely no question that the particular jewel in the MacLehose publishing crown will be Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.
In a New Statesman interview, MacLehose made an observation that has remained apposite: ‘The process by which very good books are well translated and published is so arduous that it will wear down those who do it. I don’t think this is sufficiently understood. But fortunately there are young, idealistic, knowledgeable people who continue to throw their lives into it.’
MacLehose himself may no longer be young, but shows not the slightest dimming of the energy and commitment that he has demonstrated with regard to fiction in translation for so many years. The relatively recent phenomenon of Stieg Larsson and the Millennium Trilogy may be consuming his energies at present, but it is actually only a staging post in a long and fruitful career.
Stieg Larsson’s publisher in the US, Sonny Mehta – a name spoken of with reverence in the world of books – is a publisher for whom the sobriquet ‘legendary’ might have been coined. He is in charge of the Random House US division Knopf Doubleday, an imprint which publishes both highly respectable serious writing and cash-cow blockbusters. It is his skill for publishing highly commercial and ambitious literary fiction that has made Mehta one of the most celebrated publishers in the world.
Sonny Mehta (born Ajai Singh Mehta) is the son of an Indian diplomat who was brought up in India and Switzerland before moving to England to study at Cambridge. His first impulse was to be a writer, but when (as publisher) he created something of a literary sensation, at the London publisher Paladin, with Germaine Greer’s fiery feminist polemic The Female Eunuch, it appeared that he had found his métier. (He had, in fact, studied with Germaine Greer at Cambridge). By the early 1970s Mehta was in charge of the important UK paperback publisher Pan Books, a job he held for over 15 years, and his reputation as one of the most perspicacious of bookmen grew apace. When Random House US chairman Si Newhouse contacted him about the possibility of moving to New York to take over Knopf (senior editor Robert Gottlieb had taken over William Shawn’s job as editor of the New Yorker, creating a gap), Mehta said yes, and made the momentous move to the US.
By all accounts his early days in the States for Mehta were decidedly tricky, as he struggled to come to terms with a very different publishing scene and (in the evenings) made the most of the city’s distractions (even, according to some sources, risking dismissal). But soon his unparalleled skills as a publisher ensured that he made his mark, and the already prestigious reputation of Knopf has been further burnished under his stewardship. He also transformed the company’s imprint Vintage (which he took charge of in 1989) into a particularly esteemed trade paperback institution.
While celebrated for such much-lauded literary writers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro and V S Naipaul, Mehta’s ventures into the world of high-quality crime and thriller writing have been particularly successful. While, for instance, Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (which frightened off certain UK publishers) was published as a literary novel, its mixture of extreme violence and a canny, modish analysis of the zeitgeist looked forward to Mehta’s major success with Stieg Larsson, who moved in something like similar territory. And Mehta – who also coaxed work out of the famously recalcitrant British author Douglas Adams, locking him into a hotel room until a book was complete – is now particularly noteworthy for facilitating the US association with the phenomenal success of the Millennium Trilogy. Interestingly, the publisher’s own heavy-duty lifestyle (which has led to triple heart bypass surgery) may have given him a particular sympathy for the similarly heavy-smoking Stieg Larsson. Sonny Mehta has, however, outlived his Swedish star author.
Mehta has remarked that the extraordinary success of the books in the Scandinavian countries was unprecedented, and he points out that the three top spots on the bestseller lists were at one time taken up by all three books of the trilogy. ‘And this has happened,’ he says, ‘in France, Germany and Italy – with America being one of the last in a long queue of people to catch up with the phenomenon.’
This delay was not necessarily a bad thing, according to Mehta, as it generated a considerable build-up of anticipation for the appearance of the books in America. ‘Readers were aware that something extraordinary was happening abroad,’ he says. Mehta regards any comparisons with Larsson’s Scandinavian contemporaries (such as Henning Mankell) as specious. ‘Larsson,’ he says, ‘is totally different from other Swedish crime writers. He paints on a bigger canvas… I find that the social commentary and the social analysis reminds me of John Grisham. Larsson also shares some of the social preoccupations of Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos. But an interesting thing about Larsson… is the fact that he was also a book reviewer; his passion was crime writing, and his trilogy is peppered with references to his peers in the crime writing community. He read crime fiction voraciously. There are references to Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, but he also mentions scenes by contemporary authors, both Americans and Brits. He’s like a magpie that way, and that to me is part of the pleasure of reading him. And I think other readers will share this pleasure at the references.’
When talking to me about the translation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mexico-based Steven Murray (aka Reg Keeland) said that he found it the most fun and engrossing translation task he had ever faced. ‘I could tell as I worked on the books that they would be hits,’ he said, ‘but no one could imagine how big… What strikes me most about Stieg Larsson is the way he kept his prose moving, even when in the midst of arcane digressions on any topic under the Swedish sun. Part of it is creating characters that seem like real people, with all their talents, contradictions and faults.’
Steven Murray dates his days as a translator of Scandinavian crime fiction to when he ran a small press called Fjord Press, which started in the Bay Area then moved to Seattle. ‘We published a lot of Danish classics, which in those days sold better than contemporary titles,’ he says. ‘My interest in Scandinavian fiction began when I studied at Stanford, and then went to a campus in Germany near Stuttgart. I met a group of people from Scandinavia, and moved around with them – I was impressed with the fact that they could speak whatever language was appropriate for wherever they were. I remember thinking “That’s pretty good!” I knew American students were speaking German, but I decided to raise my game.’
I asked Murray how he felt about the fact that signed editions of Stieg Larsson books now have an extra cachet in the collectors’ market if they are signed by Murray as translator; his reply to this was modest: ‘Oh, I think that’s just because the author is dead, and he’s not around to sign it. I’m the only one around to sign it – but Christopher MacLehose, his UK publisher, has a connection too – he could sign them!’
But people are more conscious of translators these days, surely? Most literary editors when reviewing foreign fiction rendered into English now expect the reviewer to comment on the translation. ‘Actually, we don’t always get a mention – quite often, even these days, we are ignored. But translators like me have been working on that very issue for at least 25 years, and perhaps our status has risen somewhat. We do usually get a royalty, even though it’s minuscule.
‘William Weaver’s translation of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose achieved some recognition in its day as an exemplary translation, and in the 1960s attention was definitely paid to the art of the translator, but perhaps only among those interested in world literature. It may be different in the UK, but frankly most Americans are not sympathetic to translated fiction – in fact, they are a little afraid of it. This might also be based on the fact that (it has to be admitted) there have been bad translations in the past. But the standard really has risen, without doubt. For instance, most people doing translations of crime fiction these days are top-notch.’
Murray told me that he first encountered Stieg Larsson and the Millennium Trilogy when the publisher Norstedts contacted him. ‘I was told this would be a rush job – an important one – and that there would be three books. Little did I know how long those three books would be – and how much of a challenge it would be to do really good work on them in a really short time. They said to me, “We have this excellent writer, who unfortunately has passed away, and we need the books doing very quickly.” This was, I think, in 2005, shortly after Larsson had died. The translation was also needed for purposes of possible films with the company Yellow Bird, which is why they said to me, “How quickly can you do this?” I would normally quote six months for a volume (as I have to leave room for other things). But I buckled down and managed to do each volume in three months, which really was quite a struggle, take it from me. I didn’t exactly give up sleep, but I certainly did give up vacations. It was a very intense working period. But I’m a night owl anyway so I’m happy to go on working in the wee small hours when most people are sound asleep.’
Of course, Steven Murray’s current celebrity has really been achieved since his secret identity was discovered; most readers understandably thought that somebody called ‘Reg Keeland’ – the name that appears in the books – had translated Stieg Larsson’s novels, but now the secret is out as to who that pseudonymous translator is.
‘Yes, now that people know who I am, I find myself being asked to do far more events and talks – and even interviews such as this one. But I didn’t entirely make a secret of my dual writing names. I did, in fact, leave clues on my blogs. In the end, I was outed by the London Times – I guess the copies they had received for review had my real name on.’
I asked Murray if, when he was first translating the books, he had any notion that he was working on what was to become a publishing phenomenon. ‘Oh yes, that was perfectly clear to me, which was why I insisted that if the books were sold to an English language publisher, I would have to have a separate contract and royalties. Although I have to admit that I really had no idea quite how big the books would be in terms of sales. It seems that barely a week passes without a sales record being broken somewhere. And there are the films – the Swedish ones that have already been made, with Hollywood, inevitably, calling.
‘Talking about films of the books, I remember discussing with my wife in the early days the possibility of movie adaptations (even before the Swedish films were made); we would indulge in fantasy casting for the American versions – who would be cast as Lisbeth Salander, for instance. I have to say that I was very happy with the casting of Lisbeth in the Swedish version – the actress Noomi Rapace is really spot-on.
‘I was less happy, though, with the actor playing Blomkvist – he was a little too old and worn-out looking. And it was certainly hard to see why he was such a babe magnet, which Blomkvist certainly is in the books!’
Murray is also known for his translations of other respected authors. ‘I’ve been lucky enough to meet several of the authors that I’ve translated in the past – such as another important Swede, Henning Mankell, for whom I translated Sidetracked, among other books. I met him twice at the Göteborg Book Fair – and although one isn’t necessarily looking for praise, it’s always nice to hear that an author is happy with what you’ve done. That, of course, is a satisfaction I will never get from Stieg Larsson, and I have to confess that it’s a source of regret for me.
‘Translation, of course, has some very specific problems; the translator has to render in another language things which simply cannot be rendered – idioms, for example. You cannot simply translate an idiom. A certain amount of subtle rewriting is sometimes necessary, but you can’t really do that with the exposition – it’s possible, to some extent, with the dialogue.
‘I suppose I do a lot of work which might be called mid-Atlantic translation, but I often put in British spellings – and then the publisher takes it from there, changing as they see fit. Interestingly, though, spoken British English is, in some ways, getting close to American. Reading Ian Rankin, these days, I’m surprised by how much sounds American. The phraseology, for instance.’
Murray is still in touch with Eva Gabrielsson, and had dinner with her in Stockholm while she was working on her own memoir of her time with Stieg Larsson. He points out that she does not speak much about the dispute over the estate, and now prefers to leave matters to the lawyers. Her principal concern, as Murray sees it, is for the literary legacy of her late partner’s work – that it is treated with respect, and that the right decisions are made concerning adaptations into other media.
Steven Murray nominates Camilla Läckberg as another Scandinavian author he is working on these days whose work inspires him. ‘Camilla Läckberg is a wonderful writer, and her book The Stonecutter is as impressive as the earlier novel of hers that got really good reviews, The Ice Princess. Stieg Larsson may be dead but Scandinavian crime fiction really is in rude health.’
While the publication of more posthumous novels from Stieg Larsson remains unlikely, there are still some intriguing written items making an appearance – such as a fascinating collection of communications between the author and his Swedish publisher Eva Gedin that offer a host of fresh insights. ‘The Last Letters of Stieg Larsson’ are in fact the e-mails (with interpolations) which were sent between Larsson and his publisher during the months prior to the publication of his first novel in Sweden. The Swedish tabloids published extracts from them when Larsson’s third novel came out, and the e-mails are also available online at a website Norstedts has set up – www.stieglarsson.se – under the heading FÖRFATTAREN (The Author). A hard copy edition has been made available (translated into Italian) by Jacopo De Michelis of Marsilio Editori. They are also available in a deluxe edition of the Trilogy published in the UK by MacLehose Press.
The Marsilio Editori booklet begins with a résumé of the author’s career (journalist, war correspondent, international expert in far-Right movements, adviser to the Swedish justice ministry, adviser to Scotland Yard) and we are reminded of Larsson’s devotion to defending democracy, whether that involved showing solidarity with Vietnam or supporting the prime minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop. There is also an encomium for Expo, pointing out that it is a research foundation with a very simple aim: to defend democracy and freedom of speech against racist, anti-Semitic, extreme Right and totalitarian movements.
Unsurprisingly, given the radical agenda sometimes exercised, Expo is described as being free from links to political parties. There is a description of volunteers which has relevance to Larsson: people involved in the work of the foundation come from very different backgrounds, from young moderates to ex-Communists. Anyone who works at Expo has to leave their personal political baggage outside the door.
Before the quotes from the author, Larsson’s status as the creator of a variety of pieces on the theme of democracy and far-Right movements is established, including Extremhögern, with Anna-Lena Lodenius, and Sverigedemokraterna: den nationella rörelsen (‘Swedish Democrats: The National Movement’) with Mikael Ekman, along with his massive enthusiasm for science fiction. But the most revealing material begins with a direct quotation from Larsson, telling how he started writing in 2001. At first, he says, it was just a pleasurable hobby, writing a text based on the vintage series Tvillingdetektiverna (‘Twin Detectives’), the sequence of children’s books from the 1950s with his former boss Kenneth Ahlbon at TT. It was a fun pursuit for the two colleagues – they calculated that by the time of writing, the fictional heroes would have been 45 and they were about to undertake their last mystery.
Tvillingdetektiverna was a lengthy series of novels for children inaugurated in 1944 which lasted right up to 1974. Nearly 50 books were published, all featuring the youthful Klas and Göran Bergendahl, identical twins. All the titles incorporated the word ‘mysteriet’ (mystery), e.g. Tunnelbane-mysteriet (‘The Tube Mystery’) or Miljon-mysteriet (‘The Million Mystery’) or Tåg-mysteriet (‘The Train Mystery’). The author’s name, Sivar Ahlrud, was a pseudonym for two writers, Ivar Ahlstedt and Sid Roland Rommerud.
This extrapolation into the present, according to Larsson (talking to Lasse Winkler in Svensk Bokhandel in October 2004) started him thinking about Pippi Longstocking. How would she behave today? What sort of an adult had she become? How would one define her – as a sociopath, a child-woman? Larsson construed that Pippi might have an alternative view of society and transmogrified her into Lisbeth Salander, making her about 25, a girl completely alienated from society. She doesn’t know anyone; she has no ability to socialise.
When planning the trilogy, Larsson decided that he needed a counterbalance to the Lisbeth character, and that was to be Mikael ‘Kalle’ Blomkvist, a 43-year-old journalist who works on his own magazine, Millennium. The action was to revolve around the editorial offices of the magazine and around Lisbeth, who doesn’t have a very active life. Larsson decided that the narrative should involve a variety of people, of all types. He opted to work with three distinct groups of characters. One group focused on Millennium, which has six employees. The secondary characters would not appear just to swell a scene: they would act and influence the plot; Larsson did not want a closed universe. Then there would be a group centred on Milton Security, a firm run by a Croatian. Finally, inevitably, there would be the police, characters who act independently. The author’s game plan was that in the third novel of the planned sequence, all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place so the reader could understand what has happened. But he wanted the books to be about ‘something else’ as well. Usually, in crime novels, the reader is not shown the consequences of what has happened in the preceding novel in a sequence. His plan was that this would not be the case – there would be a synchronicity and intertextuality.
The creation of crime fiction was something of a nocturnal activity for the author; few were party to this secret pleasure in Larsson’s life. He stated his aim clearly: more than being tendentious or aspiring to be classic literature, he considered that the primary function of a detective story narrative was to entertain the reader (though he acknowledged that – having transfixed the reader – Larsson might be able to freight in his own concerns about serious issues).
In November 2004, after Larsson’s precipitate death and the dispatch of his final manuscript, his colleague Kurdo Baksi, who makes an appearance in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, was obliged to undertake on his own something he customarily shared with Larsson – Baksi was to hold a meeting to commemorate Kristalnacht, the night of anti-Semitic violence in Nazi Germany. Larsson describes Baksi as being ‘like a little brother’ to him, and speculates that he’ll find it amusing that Baksi has a part in his novel.
Larsson, with a journalist’s thoroughness, was exercised over such issues as how many printed pages corresponded to a million letters, and wondered if there was a formula or a limit for the thickness of a book. He discussed with Eva Gedin the details of the shape of the final book, demonstrating a willingness to readily submit to the editorial process, and – to those who felt the books needed more rigorous editing – that he would have been more than flexible concerning such issues. He told Eva Gedin that he would be delivering a manuscript in which the story would be complete, the dialogue would not be polished or individual details sorted out. Pointing out that he would need more time for this, Larsson remarked (poignantly, in the light of his brief mortality): ‘We’ve got enough time before the book is due to be printed.’ But he was happy for Eva Gedin to intervene with her red pencil at this stage, and said he would revise the whole thing after having received her comments.
Larsson’s commercial canniness, which might surprise those who see him as primarily an ideological campaigner, extended as far as the promotion of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: he mentioned an idea he’d been entertaining for a year about creating a website focusing on Millennium, and asked some pertinent questions – a marketing idea such as this for an internet-based sequence is, of course, appropriate.
In reply to both of these points, Eva Gedin reassured Larsson that she wouldn’t yet make any changes with a red pencil – but talked about meeting up to discuss the more substantial corrections that may have been needed to be made in book one. She praised the construction of the books, but counselled interventions to be made on the level of line editing – and approved the notion of a website.
All of this, of course, is proof of the careful and fastidious editing process that Larsson would have been able to avail himself of had he lived.