In his bright apartment in Stockholm, in the select neighborhood of Östermalm, David Lagercrantz (Solna, 1962), the man who continued the Millennium series after Stieg Larsson, receives this newspaper to talk, at the piano, about his new novel, Obscuritas (Destiny/Column) –on sale next Wednesday the 1st– in which an Afghan refugee is murdered after refereeing a soccer match in the Swedish capital in 2003. It is announced as “the first case” of Professor Hans Rekke and the police Micaela Vargas.
His Rekke is addicted to opiates, he has an incredible sense of observation, he has a brother who works in the government... It's impossible not to think of Sherlock Holmes.
That was my goal. I finished Millennium and decided to explore the character of Sherlock Holmes, my first literary love, starting from him to do something more current. I did not like the arrogance of the original character, he is always very sure that he is a genius. So I replaced that with self-doubt and I have black demons like depression and bipolar hang over him, that's interesting in a detective because it puts him in a position to see something more than others, it puts him on the thin border between genius and madness. As I have also had the privilege of meeting people from the toughest neighborhoods in Stockholm, from which the footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic comes from (of whom I made a biography, I am Zlatan, which has now been made into a film), I put a police girl of Chilean origin who comes from there, which allows me to talk about the social segregation we have in this country. One of the few things that equalizes social classes is drug abuse.
Micaela Vargas is not Lisbeth Salander. How would she compare them?
Salander was too tough for me, too complex, dominated by the feeling of revenge and capable of great cruelty. Micaela is also tough, but less, also intelligent and an outsider, she is outside the establishment.
You were good at writing in the voice of others: like Ibrahimovic in the first person, like Stieg Larsson... Are you yourself now?
I don't know how to tell you... What does myself mean? Who I am? I have written for so long in the voice of others that I no longer know what my own was. In Millennium I approached the frontier of what I was no longer capable of doing, now I have moved to more similar situations.
Its plot, with characters who study to be great musicians, suggests the relationship between Mozart and Salieri,
That is one of the themes, the rage against the success or the talent of the other, which is often mixed with the class struggle, often has to do with the level of education that some have been able to access and others have not. Ibrahimovic was about to become a criminal.
Talk about schadenfreude...
It is the happiness that the sufferings or failures of others cause you. Doesn't it happen to them in Spain?
What contact is there between these two planets you are dealing with, the upper class and the lower class?
None. The very little that there was is getting smaller and smaller. It is very worrying. Hatred between classes is growing, our societies are becoming more unequal and, therefore, more unhappy. We had a social-democratic system based on the social elevator but that elevator has broken down, it no longer moves, people have stopped moving up in social class on their merits. Immigration stays in their world. We feel much more different from each other than we really are.
What is the Husby neighborhood like, where Vargas comes from?
It is the worst neighborhood in Stockholm, there are more and more shootings, violence is Americanized, gangs are growing... Murder rates rise because they shoot each other.
Torture is another issue. The US does not remain as a model of civilization.
A state becomes a terrorist if it tortures people, arrests them and keeps them imprisoned without a warrant, thus breaking their dignity, as in Guantanamo or other camps.
Violence rips false confessions...
Just like in the time of the witches. Torture is morally despicable but it is also not very effective because it makes you say anything so that they stop beating you.
Micaela comes from Chile, where her father was tortured by Pinochet. Is Sweden still a refugee country?
The far right rose dramatically, like never before, just after we took in 250,000 refugees from Syria. That reaction does not happen with the Ukrainians, whom we see as blonde as we are. Sweden has become more restrictive since 2015, and we also put refugees all together in the same neighborhoods, forming ghettos.
A part of the book takes place in Afghanistan. We see the Taliban ban music.
It is as I tell it. The Taliban have returned to power and they have done it again. They murder musicians, they destroy instruments... Why do they pursue beauty, whether in music or in people's bodies and faces? They don't want you to be attracted to anything beautiful. They kill what they cannot reach.
One could almost understand, not justify, that they pursued heavy metal or rap, but why classical music?
Their great historical enemy was the USSR, which educated people in classical music, and they identified both things. And it is also Western, they come from another tradition, the Hindustani.
This is the first book in a series of...
There will be five books in total.
What do you think of Karin Smirnoff, her successor to continue the Millennium series?
She is a very good writer, and productive, although not of crimes. She portrays tough characters, she doesn't rely much on the plot. They say they had enough of police books and looked for something else.
How do you feel about Millennium?
Proud to have been the first to follow Stieg Larsson. With me there was a fierce controversy, now everyone understands that it has to continue. I received some very harsh criticism, they blamed me for someone, like me, from an aristocratic class, continuing the novels of a worker like Larsson. I have survived.
What do you think about the movie about your novel What doesn't kill you makes you stronger?
It is based on my first Millennium book, the fourth in the series. It's horrible, unbelievable. I have learned that you cannot give up having some influence in the process. I saw some guys from Hollywood arrive and I thought they would know how to do their job, but...
Sweden has asked to join NATO. Are they afraid of Putin?
How not to be afraid of him? Without comparing him to Hitler, his psychology is pathological. He is arrogant and cruel.
Would a novel inspire you?
Of course, he is a perfect villain for literature: perverse, sadistic, twisted, a cutlet mobster who takes pictures of himself lifting weights, someone who smiles at you and orders your murder from behind. Someone who started stealing, obsessed with getting rich. He is a very literary figure.
Who will be his Moriarty in this series?
I'm on it! You will see it in the second book. He is someone who comes from Rekke's childhood.
