_There Are Things I Want You to Know_ About Stieg Larsson and Me - Eva Gabrielsson [30]
Dear Fredrik Quistbergh,
Norstedts has now confirmed that Stieg Larsson’s manuscript was altered before publication.
To mix real people in with fictitious characters was an important literary concept in Stieg Larsson’s novels. With the help of Norstedts, Erland and Joakim Larsson have interfered with Stieg Larsson’s original manuscript by changing the names of certain people in the third book.
This is a serious violation of Stieg Larsson’s work and his intentions. The motive for this intervention can be clearly seen in the interview Erland Larsson gave to Uppdrag Granskning: “Petty or vindictive, call it what you like, but that’s what we decided.”
For more than thirty years, Stieg Larsson lived with his companion Eva Gabrielsson in a relationship that was in all ways like marriage. Erland and Joakim Larsson have now seized permanent control of Stieg Larsson’s estate as well as the intellectual and moral rights to his work. The law is serving a deeply immoral cause. It is flagrantly obvious to all of the friends of Stieg Larsson that such behavior is immoral. Erland Larsson’s indignation at my remarks on this point clearly show that this is a touchy subject for him—which is without doubt proof that Erland Larsson is perfectly aware that it is morally deplorable to deprive Eva Gabrielsson of the estate of her companion, Stieg. I met Stieg when we were in high school back in Umea. We were very close for more than thirty years. So I can affirm that Stieg would never have allowed anyone to distort his books or deprive his companion Eva of her inheritance. In fact, if he were alive, Stieg would have done all he could to stop this. And he would have stopped at nothing.
Sincerely yours,
Anders Jakobsson
Another everyday heroine in our personal pantheon who shows up in The Millennium Trilogy is the woman who saved a man named Joy Rahman. In The Girl Who Played with Fire, when Mikael and police inspector Jan Bublanski argue about whether Lisbeth is really implicated in the murders of Dag Svensson and Mia Bergman, Blomkvist brings up a miscarriage of justice that is quite well-known in Sweden, the case of Joy Rahman. This man was condemned and imprisoned for the murder of an elderly lady and would still be behind bars if a teacher at his children’s school had not devoted several years to an assiduous investigation of his case. Stieg and I knew this teacher and understood her anger, and as we followed her struggle, we were appalled by the flaws she uncovered in the Swedish justice system. Our admiration grew for this stubborn woman who simply would not give up: she managed to have new forensic tests conducted, and with the help of a good lawyer, a psychiatrist, the prison chaplain, and a journalist, she gathered enough proof to obtain a new trial for Rahman, who was found innocent and set free after eight years in prison. In 2003, she and the journalist were awarded the Democracy Prize by Orebro University in Sweden. This schoolteacher well deserves her place in The Millennium Trilogy.
* 15 cents
Grenada
THE FIRST hundred pages of The Girl Who Played with Fire take place on the island of Grenada, where Lisbeth has decided to spend some time. Why Grenada? Because it was our island. And that’s a long story.
Early in the 1980s, Stieg and I happened to read some articles by African American journalists about the Grenadian people in the English-language magazine of the Fourth International, in which there was an entertaining account of the popular uprising that toppled the dictator Eric Gairy, who had often deeply embarrassed his country before the entire world … in speeches full of references to UFOs, in which he adamantly believes.
This spot far across the ocean intrigued us. With its crazy mix of social democracy and Trotskyism, it seemed to enjoy a humanist attitude graced