“What are we supposed to do with all the money?”
I should stress that David Lagercrantz only sounded like a character out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. He hadn’t robbed a bank. Instead he had recently published The Girl in the Spider’s Web, the sequel to Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millennium Trilogy. We were having dinner at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, cracking open a bottle of champagne to toast his success. But Lagercrantz is more ambivalent than appearances might indicate. Although his sequel has been a success in commercial terms, he has been attacked by Swedish literary figures. Henning Mankell said that he had “betrayed literature,” while others have accused him of being a “monster plundering a grave.” Lagercrantz, now working on a new Larsson novel, feels a little like a pop star who can’t quite work out why he has become so immensely popular—and unpopular—overnight.
David Lagercrantz has been accused of “betraying literature” by Henning Mankell
© JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/GETTY IMAGES, CAMERA PRESS