(Stockholm) Fans of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, rejoice, the new volume of the saga Millennium comes out on Friday in Swedish bookstores, the first from the pen of Karin Smirnoff, the second writer to continue the series imagined by Stieg Larsson.
Posted at 9:25 a.m.
A former journalist who became an entrepreneur in the wood sector before converting to writing in her fifties, Karin Smirnoff did not hesitate for a moment when her publishing house offered her to write a sequel to Millenniumthe standard of Nordic Blackcreated in the early 2000s by Stieg Larsson.
“It was rather easy to accept the project,” said the novelist in an interview with AFP, who does not hide her sympathy for the hacker Lisbeth Salander, one of the main characters of the saga.
She also says she shares with the initial author an appetite for certain subjects.
“We have subjects in common, for example violence, the one that runs through society, between men, on an international scale,” she says.
Sold in more than 100 million copies, published in more than 50 countries around the world and adapted several times to the cinema, the saga Millennium is one of the greatest publishing successes of the XXIe century, combined with a tragic fate.
Controversial
An investigative journalist specializing in far-right movements, Stieg Larsson died of a heart attack in 2004 just after submitting his first three manuscripts.
He will therefore never have known the fortune or seen the success of his work, just like his companion Eva Gabrielsson, excluded from the succession, because the couple was not married.
The legacy controversy reignited years later when best-selling author David Lagercrantz agreed on a three-novel first sequel, with the agreement of Stieg Larsson’s brother and father. , legatees of his work.
For this third trilogy, Karin Smirnoff intends to “continue respecting what has already been done” while adding her “own point of view in the three books”, of which she moves the plot further north, already described in her previous novels. .
PHOTO VIKEN KANTARCI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Sold in more than 100 million copies, published in more than 50 countries around the world and adapted several times to the cinema, the saga Millennium is one of the greatest publishing successes of the XXIe century, combined with a tragic fate.
According to her, a work necessarily exceeds its creator.
“I don’t think art belongs to anyone, if it did, art wouldn’t progress at all,” says the fifty-year-old, who defends an exclusively artistic adventure.
“I know a lot of people think it’s just about the money. It’s not,” she says.
“For me, it’s about continuing a huge and world-famous project, and it’s quite a task to continue it.”
Great North
In this seventh opus, it is in the Swedish Far North that Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander will continue their adventures.
“I live in the north of Sweden and I wanted it to happen here,” says Mme Karin Smirnoff, who does not define herself as a thriller author, but as a writer exploring human relations.
Placing the plot more than a thousand kilometers from Stockholm, where the previous volumes mostly take place, is also an opportunity to point out the injustices suffered by the region.
This ancestral land of the Sami indigenous peoples has been experiencing an industrial boom for several years, particularly for the exploitation of its natural resources.
“Historically, people came from the south of the country to exploit the north, and send the profits abroad or to the south. I think that in a way, the same thing is happening with new energy sources and mines”, she denounces.
“Billions are injected into the region and with the billions also come the problems,” says the writer.
The 50-year-old now awaits the verdict of the readers.
“I wrote the last word three weeks ago. For me, it’s too close, I can’t decide if it’s good, ”she hesitates.
“It’s going to be exciting when he comes out to see what other people think.”