The Martin Beck Series, a question for any Swedes here.
Posted Jun 3, 2009, 8:47 PM UTC
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Wikipedia says:
Beginning in the 1970s and culminating with the deep recession of the early 1990s, Swedish standards of living developed less favorably than many other industrialized countries. Since the mid 1990s the economic performance has improved.
I'm not Swedish, so I have no personal experience. But there is that.
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Aye, I read that. But in the books, the authors implicate the Welfare state (frequently using those words sarcastically). I was wondering what a Swede thought of the state of his country.
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I've been a fan of this series for a while now, and I managed to get my hands on Cop Killer (the 9th one). One common theme through the whole thing is the society in Sweden, and if I were to only know Sweden through these books I would think it is a very dismal place, which tried out a welfare state and failed terribly.
I've plugged the Swedish model of a welfare state everywhere, thinking from all the numbers that it was a nice place, during the periods between reading these books.
Is it really as bad as the books make it seem? Or have things gone in a completely different direction since 1975?
[deleted]
Thanks for the tip :) I found 'Faceless Killers' on Amazon and there are people saying they're similar to Martin Beck there too. Pity Amazon doesn't ship to India.
Any particular book you'd recommend?
I love Mankell, but...
I don't know which versions of his books you have been reading but the translations are at best shite. It is almost as if they sent the text to the translation service and they plugged it into a computer and hit 'enter' and never checked if there were any mistakes. Sometimes I have to go over the sentence a couple of times to actually accept that it isn't a complete sentence.
Wallander is good as a TV replacement. I've read the entire series and a couple of his other books. Addictive in their simplicity but also annoying in the repetition.
Try Karin Fossum..a Norwegian crime author.
[deleted]
Ah I see, that's what I wanted to know. Thanks.