The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (7 page)

The
Millennium Trilogy
has been a massive success in the UK for the British independent publisher Quercus, founded by the legendary UK publisher Anthony Cheetham and now run by the energetic and savvy Mark Smith. Christopher MacLehose runs his own imprint within the company, and continues to bring the same innovative publishing skills to bear as he did in his days running the Harvill Press. But how does he compare his current publishing incarnation with the glories of his past career?

‘Nothing will quite compare with my years at Harvill Press, as that was an imprint that was devoted to the translation of pure literature. But we did publish Peter Høeg, Henning Mankell, Fred Vargas and many others who are also considered as European crime writers. However, there is no one quite like the Quercus team. They are young, work flat out all day and all night. I’ll tell you what it’s like: when I left Chatto & Windus and went to Collins, who were then a tremendously vigorous young publishing house, I described it like free-falling downwards, without a parachute. Working with Quercus is like getting out of the aeroplane and suddenly you are moving very fast, very fast indeed, and there is no parachute.’

MacLehose has talked about other much-acclaimed crime novels he has published, such as
Death in Breslau
by Marek Krajewski, and while books such as this will no doubt add lustre to his legacy, there is absolutely no question that the particular jewel in the MacLehose publishing crown will be Stieg Larsson’s
Millennium Trilogy
.

In a
New Statesman
interview, MacLehose made an observation that has remained apposite: ‘The process by which very good books are well translated and published is so arduous that it will wear down those who do it. I don’t think this is sufficiently understood. But fortunately there are young, idealistic, knowledgeable people who continue to throw their lives into it.’

MacLehose himself may no longer be young, but shows not the slightest dimming of the energy and commitment that he has demonstrated with regard to fiction in translation for so many years. The relatively recent phenomenon of Stieg Larsson and the
Millennium Trilogy
may be consuming his energies at present, but it is actually only a staging post in a long and fruitful career.

Stieg Larsson’s publisher in the US, Sonny Mehta – a name spoken of with reverence in the world of books – is a publisher for whom the sobriquet ‘legendary’ might have been coined. He is in charge of the Random House US division Knopf Doubleday, an imprint which publishes both highly respectable serious writing and cash-cow blockbusters. It is his skill for publishing highly commercial and ambitious literary fiction that has made Mehta one of the most celebrated publishers in the world.

Sonny Mehta (born Ajai Singh Mehta) is the son of an Indian diplomat who was brought up in India and Switzerland before moving to England to study at Cambridge. His first impulse was to be a writer, but when (as publisher) he created something of a literary sensation, at the London publisher Paladin, with Germaine Greer’s fiery feminist polemic
The Female Eunuch
, it appeared that he had found his métier. (He had, in fact, studied with Germaine Greer at Cambridge). By the early 1970s Mehta was in charge of the important UK paperback publisher Pan Books, a job he held for over 15 years, and his reputation as one of the most perspicacious of bookmen grew apace. When Random House US chairman Si Newhouse contacted him about the possibility of moving to New York to take over Knopf (senior editor Robert Gottlieb had taken over William Shawn’s job as editor of the
New Yorker
, creating a gap), Mehta said yes, and made the momentous move to the US.

By all accounts his early days in the States for Mehta were decidedly tricky, as he struggled to come to terms with a very different publishing scene and (in the evenings) made the most of the city’s distractions (even, according to some sources, risking dismissal). But soon his unparalleled skills as a publisher ensured that he made his mark, and the already prestigious reputation of Knopf has been further burnished under his stewardship. He also transformed the company’s imprint Vintage (which he took charge of in 1989) into a particularly esteemed trade paperback institution.

While celebrated for such much-lauded literary writers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro and V S Naipaul, Mehta’s ventures into the world of high-quality crime and thriller writing have been particularly successful. While, for instance, Bret Easton Ellis’s
American Psycho
(which frightened off certain UK publishers) was published as a literary novel, its mixture of extreme violence and a canny, modish analysis of the zeitgeist looked forward to Mehta’s major success with Stieg Larsson, who moved in something like similar territory. And Mehta – who also coaxed work out of the famously recalcitrant British author Douglas Adams, locking him into a hotel room until a book was complete – is now particularly noteworthy for facilitating the US association with the phenomenal success of the
Millennium Trilogy
. Interestingly, the publisher’s own heavy-duty lifestyle (which has led to triple heart bypass surgery) may have given him a particular sympathy for the similarly heavy-smoking Stieg Larsson. Sonny Mehta has, however, outlived his Swedish star author.

Mehta has remarked that the extraordinary success of the books in the Scandinavian countries was unprecedented, and he points out that the three top spots on the bestseller lists were at one time taken up by all three books of the trilogy. ‘And this has happened,’ he says, ‘in France, Germany and Italy – with America being one of the last in a long queue of people to catch up with the phenomenon.’

This delay was not necessarily a bad thing, according to Mehta, as it generated a considerable build-up of anticipation for the appearance of the books in America. ‘Readers were aware that something extraordinary was happening abroad,’ he says. Mehta regards any comparisons with Larsson’s Scandinavian contemporaries (such as Henning Mankell) as specious. ‘Larsson,’ he says, ‘is totally different from other Swedish crime writers. He paints on a bigger canvas… I find that the social commentary and the social analysis reminds me of John Grisham. Larsson also shares some of the social preoccupations of Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos. But an interesting thing about Larsson… is the fact that he was also a book reviewer; his passion was crime writing, and his trilogy is peppered with references to his peers in the crime writing community. He read crime fiction voraciously. There are references to Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, but he also mentions scenes by contemporary authors, both Americans and Brits. He’s like a magpie that way, and that to me is part of the pleasure of reading him. And I think other readers will share this pleasure at the references.’

When talking to me about the translation of
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
, Mexico-based Steven Murray (aka Reg Keeland) said that he found it the most fun and engrossing translation task he had ever faced. ‘I could tell as I worked on the books that they would be hits,’ he said, ‘but no one could imagine how big… What strikes me most about Stieg Larsson is the way he kept his prose moving, even when in the midst of arcane digressions on any topic under the Swedish sun. Part of it is creating characters that seem like real people, with all their talents, contradictions and faults.’

Steven Murray dates his days as a translator of Scandinavian crime fiction to when he ran a small press called Fjord Press, which started in the Bay Area then moved to Seattle. ‘We published a lot of Danish classics, which in those days sold better than contemporary titles,’ he says. ‘My interest in Scandinavian fiction began when I studied at Stanford, and then went to a campus in Germany near Stuttgart. I met a group of people from Scandinavia, and moved around with them – I was impressed with the fact that they could speak whatever language was appropriate for wherever they were. I remember thinking “That’s pretty good!” I knew American students were speaking German, but I decided to raise my game.’

I asked Murray how he felt about the fact that signed editions of Stieg Larsson books now have an extra cachet in the collectors’ market if they are signed by Murray as translator; his reply to this was modest: ‘Oh, I think that’s just because the author is dead, and he’s not around to sign it. I’m the only one around to sign it – but Christopher MacLehose, his UK publisher, has a connection too – he could sign them!’

But people are more conscious of translators these days, surely? Most literary editors when reviewing foreign fiction rendered into English now expect the reviewer to comment on the translation. ‘Actually, we don’t always get a mention – quite often, even these days, we are ignored. But translators like me have been working on that very issue for at least 25 years, and perhaps our status has risen somewhat. We do usually get a royalty, even though it’s minuscule.

‘William Weaver’s translation of Umberto Eco’s
The Name of the Rose
achieved some recognition in its day as an exemplary translation, and in the 1960s attention was definitely paid to the art of the translator, but perhaps only among those interested in world literature. It may be different in the UK, but frankly most Americans are not sympathetic to translated fiction – in fact, they are a little afraid of it. This might also be based on the fact that (it has to be admitted) there have been bad translations in the past. But the standard really has risen, without doubt. For instance, most people doing translations of crime fiction these days are top-notch.’

Murray told me that he first encountered Stieg Larsson and the
Millennium Trilogy
when the publisher Norstedts contacted him. ‘I was told this would be a rush job – an important one – and that there would be three books. Little did I know how long those three books would be – and how much of a challenge it would be to do really good work on them in a really short time. They said to me, “We have this excellent writer, who unfortunately has passed away, and we need the books doing very quickly.” This was, I think, in 2005, shortly after Larsson had died. The translation was also needed for purposes of possible films with the company Yellow Bird, which is why they said to me, “How quickly can you do this?” I would normally quote six months for a volume (as I have to leave room for other things). But I buckled down and managed to do each volume in three months, which really was quite a struggle, take it from me. I didn’t exactly give up sleep, but I certainly did give up vacations. It was a very intense working period. But I’m a night owl anyway so I’m happy to go on working in the wee small hours when most people are sound asleep.’

Of course, Steven Murray’s current celebrity has really been achieved since his secret identity was discovered; most readers understandably thought that somebody called ‘Reg Keeland’ – the name that appears in the books – had translated Stieg Larsson’s novels, but now the secret is out as to who that pseudonymous translator is.

‘Yes, now that people know who I am, I find myself being asked to do far more events and talks – and even interviews such as this one. But I didn’t entirely make a secret of my dual writing names. I did, in fact, leave clues on my blogs. In the end, I was outed by the London
Times –
I guess the copies they had received for review had my real name on.’

I asked Murray if, when he was first translating the books, he had any notion that he was working on what was to become a publishing phenomenon. ‘Oh yes, that was perfectly clear to me, which was why I insisted that if the books were sold to an English language publisher, I would have to have a separate contract and royalties. Although I have to admit that I really had no idea quite how big the books would be in terms of sales. It seems that barely a week passes without a sales record being broken somewhere. And there are the films – the Swedish ones that have already been made, with Hollywood, inevitably, calling.

‘Talking about films of the books, I remember discussing with my wife in the early days the possibility of movie adaptations (even before the Swedish films were made); we would indulge in fantasy casting for the American versions – who would be cast as Lisbeth Salander, for instance. I have to say that I was very happy with the casting of Lisbeth in the Swedish version – the actress Noomi Rapace is really spot-on.

‘I was less happy, though, with the actor playing Blomkvist – he was a little too old and worn-out looking. And it was certainly hard to see why he was such a babe magnet, which Blomkvist certainly is in the books!’

Murray is also known for his translations of other respected authors. ‘I’ve been lucky enough to meet several of the authors that I’ve translated in the past – such as another important Swede, Henning Mankell, for whom I translated
Sidetracked,
among other books. I met him twice at the Göteborg Book Fair – and although one isn’t necessarily looking for praise, it’s always nice to hear that an author is happy with what you’ve done. That, of course, is a satisfaction I will never get from Stieg Larsson, and I have to confess that it’s a source of regret for me.

‘Translation, of course, has some very specific problems; the translator has to render in another language things which simply cannot be rendered – idioms, for example. You cannot simply translate an idiom. A certain amount of subtle rewriting is sometimes necessary, but you can’t really do that with the exposition – it’s possible, to some extent, with the dialogue.