Saturday, October 04, 2008

More on the Swedish meatball ...

... On American isolation and insularity. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I am about to read Per Petterson's In Siberia, and I reviewed Out Stealing Horses and routinely recommend it. My fondness for Torgny Lindgren is well known.
It's also worth noting that European crime fiction hasn't done badly in this country - Henning Mankell and Helene Tursten, for instance (both Swedes, by the way). But a lot of European popular fiction is actually inferior to its American counterpart. I reviewed Javier Sierra's Da Vinci Code spinoff, The Secret Supper and thought it was OK - but that OK isn't really good enough in the highly competitive crime fiction world. Matilde Asensi's The Last Cato, which I also reviewed, and which was another Da Vinci spinoff, which simply awful.
On the other hand, another book I reviewed, Laura Grimaldi's Suspicion, stands comparison with Simenon's best romans dur (which may be why the one Amazon reviewer found it boring; I think he must have been looking for something less-psychological, less - dare I say it? - of a work of literature).
At any rate, for those interested in European fiction there's Europa Editions and Dufour Editions, both of which are deserving of your support.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:27 PM

    Franz -- we are on the same page, perhaps literally. I'm reading "Siberia" right now too for a big essay on lit. in translation. Petterson is a superb writer; now I must get that "Stealing Horses" book.

    Sad to say how much dreck is in the mere 3% of world lit translated into English. And I am supposedly reading the creme de la creme of the 3% (about 40 novels & story collections). I should send a few of these gems Horace's way....

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  2. Anonymous1:09 PM

    I've been enjoying several Swedish novels in the past year or so - including some mentioned here and Stieg Larsson (Girl with Dragon Tattoo) doing well in the US I believe, Camilla Lackberg, and others. Here's Euro Crime's list of Scandianvian novels - not limited to Sweden, though.
    http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/books/books_bib_Scandinavia.html

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  3. Anonymous4:33 PM

    In case you haven't tasted enough of the latest Nobel meatball, I just posted my recommendation that Engdahl read Milan Kundera, who has preempted almost any worth reply.

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