Hope you're all enjoying the holidays. I started the book this weekend and made a few notes:
First, the translator is Reg Keeland, aka Steven T. Murray, an American literary translator originally from Berkeley, CA, who has translated over 20 books. Just out of curiosity, does anyone on this blog speak Swedish?
The story is set in Stockholm, Sweden, in modern times (early 2000s?), and the protagonist, Blomkvist, says he has an apartment on "Bellmansgatan", which I discovered is a road on an island in central Stockholm.
The nickname "Kalle" comes up quite a bit at the outset and is apparently common in Sweden for Karl/Carl. In particular, there is reference to Kalle Blomkvist from books by Astrid Lindgren in 1940s/50s (aka Bill Bergson in English translations), who was "a more-or-less ordinary Swedish boy with an extraordinary fascination for detective work". Perhaps the fictitious "Kalle Blomkvist" is the Swedish version of the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew?
Any initial thoughts/comments/questions?
-John
p.s. I noticed that the translator used "gaol" (i.e. British variant of "jail"), at least in my copy.
One other thing: out of curiosity (I'm an economist), I looked up the exchange rate for Swedish Kronors. The Kronor varies at around 7 to 9 SEK to the US dollar. So when it says that Blomkvist owes SEK 150,000, that would be around US$ 18,500, just to keep things in perspective, right? :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, John. This background information helped me when I started reading the book.
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