not yet translated
At the Fans of Scandinavian Crime Novels Facebook group, some “missing Perssons” were identified – writers who haven’t yet been translated, but would be of interest to an English language audience. Then two more names popped up when I blogged about it. So I thought we should start a list. Know of a crime writer from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, or Sweden whose work should be translated? Leave a comment here.
Dan Turell – Denmark – “A larger than life Danish writer who died in 1993 at the age of 47. He wrote ten crime stories with great style, wit and warmth.” Don Bartlett, translator of Jo Nesbo and others, thinks he should be available in English. If Don says so, I agree wholeheartedly. (Publishers, are you listening?)
Leif Persson – Sweden – Wikipedia says Doubleday (UK and Commonwealth) and Knopf (US) hold rights, but I can’t find any published translations. (See the interesting background information at Petrona from a well-known translator.)
Unni Lindell - Norway
Arne Dahl – Sweden – Pen name of Jan Arnald; US rights are held by Pantheon and publication may be forthcoming – ? Nothing listed yet in Books in Print. He won the Deutsche Krimi Pries in 2005.
Matti Rönkä – Finland – won the 2007 Glass Key award (the highest honor for crime fiction in Scandinavia) and the Deutsche Krimi Preis in 2008. Come on publishers, we need more Finnish translations!
Victor Arnar Ingolfsson – Iceland – has twice been the Icelandic nominee for the Glass Key award.
Liza Marklund – four of her books have been translated, but more recent ones have not had English rights sold, so far as I can tell from the Salomonsson Agency’s site.
Árni Thórarinsson – an Icelandic author of urban noir crime fiction who has become popular in France; according to an interview there, he does not exaggerate his portrait of Iceland and he does not own a cell phone. Chouette.
Emma Vall - the pseudonym of three women who write both an adult series about a reporter, Amanda Rönn, in northern Sweden; they also write a series for young readers.
Thomas Kanger – a reporter who writes a series about a young female cop, Elina Wiik.
Åsa Nilsonne -a psychiatrist who writes a series set in Stockholm featuring police officer Monika Pedersen.
Leena Lehtolainen – a Finnish author first published at age 12 (!) who writes a series about a policewoman, Maria Kallio.
Gretelise Holm – Danish author whose debut novel apparently won a Danish crime writers’ prize and has written a series featuring journalist Karin Sommer.
Be sure to read the comments to learn about the Finnish writers Pentti Kirstilä, Sirpa Tabet, Harri Nykänen, Tapani Bagge, and Seppo Jokinen.
here are a few good Finns – besides Mr. Rönkä, and Matti Joensuu (published by Arcadia in UK)- worth anybody’s while (most of the names & titles below are available in German already) …US/UK publishers & agents, please take note!
- Pentti Kirstilä; two-time recipient of the Clew of the Year award for the best in Finnish crime, esp. “Imelda” (1992, publisher/foreign rights WSOY, Helsinki), a real Chinese-box of a noir thriller.
- Sirpa Tabet; chilling psychological mysteries in Highsmith vein, “Yöleikki” (‘The Night Game’) from 1999 is among her very best. (Published by Otava, Helsinki)
- Harri Nykänen; former crime reporter, and also two-time winner of the Clew 0 Glass Key candidate, has several series + standalones going: “Raid”, also a popular Finnish TV series from 2000, an underworld enforcer with a code of ethics from the Old West, and DI Ariel Kafka, a Jewish homicide investigator with Helsinki CID (Publisher/foreign rights WSOY)
- Tapani Bagge; our version of a young Westlake, or Larry Block, churns out all forms of fiction at breakneck rate, won the Clew in 2007 for “Musta taivas” (‘The Black Sky’, also nominated for the Glass Key but lost to Larsson, the dead guy), part of a series about small-time crooks and low-lifes creating carnage and mayhem in his provincial hometown, the medieval Hämeenlinna. (Publisher Tammi/Bonniers, Helsinki)
- Seppo Jokinen; a series of humane police procedurals with a social conscience about DI Koskinen and his CID team in the industrial city of Tampere; won the Clew in 2002 with “Hukan enkelit” (‘Hells-on-Wheels’), another top title is “Sana sanaa vastaan” (‘Word Against Word’) from 2005 dealing with corrupt city developers and the heavy toll of industrial action in 1970s. (Publisher Karisto, Hämeenlinna)
This is a treasure trove! Kiitos!!! I think there has been one of Tapani Bagge’s short stories translated into English, but the other names are not familiar. I will post these to my “you should publish translations of these” list.
Arne Dahl and Leif Persson have both been published in Canada in the past few years, but only in French translation so far.
Books in Print lists the following titles for Leif Persson in English:
* Between the Promise of Summer and the Cold of Winter
* Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s Cold (probably an alternate title for the former)
* Falling Freely, As If in a Dream
* Another Time, Another Life
There are, of course, no publication dates listed at this time. Also according to Books in Print, the rights seem to be Random House for the UK and HarperCollins for the US, which doesn’t exactly jive with the Wikipedia article that says that Random House hold the rights for the entire English-speaking world (Doubleday = Knopf = Random House).
Whatever the case, I’m sure they’ll come out in English at some point, as he’s apparently quite a big deal in Sweden. As an example, one of his French publishers says that Mellan sommarens längtan och vinterns köld (Between Summer’s Longing And Winter’s Cold) sold 500,000 copies in Sweden (a country of only 9 million people!).
I really enjoy your website. Keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Thomas
http://skandilit.wordpress.com/category/crime-fiction/
Great information – thanks, Thomas. I knew about the French translation of Mysterioso from a Quebecoise friend. I’m jealous! I suppose I could dust off my French….
Thanks also for the link to the terrific Skandlit site for Scandinavian literature in translation. Canada is a great crossroads of the publishing world for both French and English books. There are some terrific specialty bookstores in Canada for crime fiction – Whodunit in Winnepeg and Sleuth of Baker Street in Toronto come to mind – where you can pick up those books that haven’t quite made it across the pond (in either direction) yet.
Barbara,
Thank you for the kind words regarding my website.
I’ve been in Montreal for two years now, but Winnipeg (2,000 km / 1,250 miles to the west) is my hometown, and I have fond memories of the quaint little shop on Lilac Street that is Whodunit.
Another point worth mentioning is that Winnipeg (and the province of Manitoba in general) is, like Minnesota, a centre of Scandinavian culture in North America. Indeed, Winnipeg was the ‘Swedish Capital’ of Canada up until World War II (my great-grandparents were Swedish immigrants), and Manitoba is to this day home to the world’s largest Icelandic community outside of Iceland (and soon to be home to Canada’s newest IKEA store!)
If you add to the mix that Winnipeg also has the largest concentration of French-Canadians in Western Canada (which is why I was taught French at school), and that French publishers translate much more fiction (including Scandinavian fiction) than their English-language counterparts, then you can see that I was practically born to produce a website on Scandinavian Literature in Translation.
Often when I describe where I live, I say “eight hours due south of Winnipeg.” It’s a nice weekend trip for us. I was aware of the Icelandic population from staying at a provincial park on Lake Winnipeg – where there once was a major fishing industry that provided lots of Icelanders with jobs. But mostly in Winnipeg I noticed the concentration of Russian and Ukrainian churches and shops, which (as a former Russian lit major) I enjoyed tremendously.
I told Arnaldur Indridason when he visited our campus a couple of years ago that he should make a stop in Winnipeg next time he’s on tour. I also mentioned that to his US publisher but they seemed to think Minnesota was at the farthest outskirts of the known world.
My daughter is just working on an application for grad school at McGill. I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll have her as an excuse to visit (not to mention that their global nursing program is a perfect fit for her).
As it seems that many English readers enjoy Anne Holt´s books about Adam Stubo & Johanne Vik, I think they would also like her earlier series about “Hanne Wilhelmsen”, strong, stubborn & independent police something (don´t recall her title).
This is a great idea to help get some stuff published, but I can’t comment on some of these books that are already in the works until the publisher approves it.
I was approached to do a sample of Mellan sommarens längtan och vinterns köld several years ago and turned it down. One of the detective’s sidekicks is a crude racist who denigrates black folks. I was neither amused nor convinced that it would sell in the American market, and I didn’t care for Persson’s style. I think another translator was commissioned but I never heard that the book came out. Some of P’s books are available in German and Spanish.
I’m glad to know some of them are in the works! Let’s hope the publishing gods smile upon us.
Funny about the racist sidekick. There are some memorable ones of that type – John Harvey’s Charlie Resnick series has one, and of course there’s Fat Ollie Weeks of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct. But they’re not admirable characters, they’re laughable. Well, both in some ways are sympathetic, but totally in spite of themselves. In these cases, I think they’re an honest and necessary depiction of a mix of cops that includes some whose views are pretty crude. Hey, it happens…
I gather that’s not the way it’s handled in Persson’s ensemble cast, as an object lesson in what’s wrong with law enforcement.
I have no idea, I could only stomach about 25 pages. Let’s hope such things are going the way of the dodo.