Looking Over the Book from the Outside

Three separate women at a restaurant last night came over to the table to ask me if I liked the book! I took it along with me to steal a minute or two to read at the table. I've never seen such interest from strangers in what I am reading.

The novel is separated into Prologue, four parts, and Epilogue: "Final Audit". Each of the four parts quotes a statistic of violence against women. Part 1, Incentive, says, "Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man." Part 2, Consequence Analyses, says, "Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence of a man." Part 3, Mergers, says, "Thirteen percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship." Part 4, Hostile Takeover, says "Ninety-two percent of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police."

This novel was first published 2005 in Swedish under the title "Man som hatar kvinnor" -- "Men Who Hate Women".

"Larsson, witnessed the gang rape of a girl when he was 15 which led to his lifelong disgust of violence and abuse of women. The author never forgave himself for failing to help the girl, whose name was Lisbeth - like the young heroine of his books, who is herself a rape victim. This inspired the themes of sexual violence against women in his books." from Wikipedia.

"Larsson was initially a political activist for the Kommunistiska Arbetareförbundet (Communist Workers League), a photographer, and one of Sweden's leading science fiction fans. In politics he was the editor of the Swedish Trotskyist journal Fjärde internationalen. He also wrote regularly for the weekly Internationalen. He worked as a graphic designer at the largest Swedish news agency, Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT) between 1977 and 1999." from Wikipedia

"Larsson's political convictions, as well as his journalistic experiences, led him to the founding of the Swedish Expo Foundation, similar to the British Searchlight Foundation, established to "counteract the growth of the extreme right and the white power-culture in schools and among young people." He also became the editor of the foundation's magazine, Expo. Larsson quickly became instrumental in documenting and exposing Swedish extreme right and racist organizations; he was an influential debater and lecturer on the subject, reportedly living for years under death threats from his political enemies." from Wikipedia

Mr. Larsson died of a heart attack.

Okaaay then. Mr. Larsson is a Trotsky man -- permanent revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat by "democratic principles rather than an unaccountable bureaucracy" (good luck with that one), very very far left even of the very far left Marxism. It is facinating to note that Mr. Larsson's political convictions are not discussed on his own website. His resume underscores his strongly held beliefs -- but I guess putting that fact up front would not sell books. Or ideology. Stealth?

Now that's quite a filter to consider in reading this novel.

The novel was translated into English by Reg Keeland. Mr. Keeland must be an accomplished translator (and Vintage Books must have accomplished editors) because the novel's prose has a lovely cadence and beautiful voice.