David Lagercrantz

David Lagercrantz as Augustpriset nominee in 2012.
Official press photo (2008)

David Lagercrantz (born 4 September 1962) is a Swedish journalist and best-selling author, internationally known as author of Zlatan Ibrahimović's biography I am Zlatan Ibrahimović and as the current writer of the Millennium series, originally by Stieg Larsson.

Family and personal life

Lagercrantz grew up in Sweden's foremost journalistic and intellectual circles. He is the son of Swedish publisher and literary scholar Olof Lagercrantz and his wife Martina Ruin, daughter of philosopher Hans Ruin. He grew up in Solna and Drottningholm near Stockholm, together with his brothers and sisters, among them actress and diplomat Marika Lagercrantz. The family is descended from a junior line of the untitled Swedish noble family Lagercrantz and is as such member of the Swedish House of Nobility.[1] Through his paternal grandmother and the Swedish line of the clan Hamilton he is also a descendant of the 19th century historian and poet Erik Gustaf Geijer.

Lagercrantz has described his upper-class background as problematic and a cause of antagonism, in a literary and journalistic environment dominated by radical left writers in early 1980s Sweden, even though he himself held leftist political views. As a consequence, he largely withdrew from the intellectual debate and "culture pages sphere" during his journalist career.[2]

Lagercrantz is married to the journalist and Dagens Eko radio news manager Anne Lagercrantz and has three children.[2]

He is first cousin to Left Party politician and economist Johan Lönnroth.

Journalist

Lagercrantz studied philosophy and religion at university and subsequently graduated from the Gothenburg journalism school. His first journalist job was at the in-house magazine of carmaker Volvo. He later moved to the daily tabloid newspaper Expressen and worked until 1993 as a crime reporter, covering some of the major criminal cases of the late 80s and early 90s in Sweden, notably the Åmsele murders.

Author

His first book was released in 1997, a biography of the Swedish adventurer and mountaineer Göran Kropp (1966–2002).

In 2000, his biography on the inventor Håkan Lans, Ett svenskt geni, was published. His breakthrough as a novelist was Syndafall i Wilmslow, a fictionalised novel about the British mathematician Alan Turing.[2]

I am Zlatan Ibrahimović (2011)

Zlatan Ibrahimović

In November 2011, his best-selling sports biography I am Zlatan Ibrahimović[3] was published, with Lagercrantz as credited ghostwriter. According to Lagercrantz, the book is largely based on approximately 100 hours of interviews conducted with Ibrahimović in Milan. Lagercrantz chose to approach the project as a novel, rather than a conventional ghostwritten autobiography written as a journalistic piece, and later stated that none of Ibrahimović's voice in the book is actual quotes, but rather an attempt to capture the "literary Ibrahimović", a concept which Ibrahimović at first was sceptical about. Lagercrantz explained to Ibrahimović that he found David Beckham's more conventional autobiography boring, to which the footballer replied "Who the f--- is Beckham?".[4] The Swedish language edition sold over 500,000 copies before Christmas 2011, which according to his literary agency Bonnier Group Agency is the fastest selling book of all time in Sweden. The rights have been sold to more than 30 countries. The biography was nominated for the Augustpriset book award in 2012.

In Financial Times, Simon Kuper compared the biography to Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and drew parallels between the main characters' experiences as minority members and outsiders struggling for recognition and acceptance in mainstream society, calling it "The best footballer’s autobiography of recent years".[5]

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2015)

In December 2013, the Swedish publishing company Norstedts announced that Lagercrantz had been contracted to write the fourth novel in the Millennium series of crime novels, originally by Stieg Larsson (1954–2004). The novel was published at midnight August 26-27, 2015, around the ten-year anniversary of the first Millennium novel. According to the publisher, the book is a stand-alone sequel based on Larsson's characters, but has not made use of the incomplete book manuscripts and notes he left behind. Lagercrantz, however, stated in an interview with Aftonbladet that he had picked up some of the unfinished plot threads from the published novels.[6][7] The draft was reported as finished by Lagercrantz in January 2015. The Swedish title is Det som inte dödar oss, literally translated "That Which Does Not Kill Us".[8] The English language title is The Girl in the Spider's Web.[9]

Bibliography

Göran Kropp (1995)

Notes

  1. ↑ Sveriges Adelskalender. 1956–2013.
  2. 1 2 3 Röshammar, Martin (15 June 2012). "Jag har blommat ut som excentriker". Fokus. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  3. ↑ Redfern, Simon (7 December 2013). "Book of the Week: I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic as told to David Lagercrantz". The Independent. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  4. ↑ Singh, Anita (26 May 2015). "Zlatan Ibrahimovic: 'Who the f--- is David Beckham?'". The Telegraph. Retrieved 27 May 2015.
  5. ↑ Kuper, Simon (1 March 2013). "Philip Roth and Zlatan Ibrahimović". Financial Times. Retrieved 20 December 2013.
  6. ↑ "Fjärde boken i Millenniumserien ges ut". Aftonbladet. 17 December 2013. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  7. ↑ "Sequel announced to Stieg Larsson's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy". The Guardian. 17 December 2013. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  8. ↑ "Ny ”Millennium”-bok i augusti". Folkbladet. TT Spektra. 27 January 2015. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
  9. ↑ "From 'Dragon Tattoo' To The 'Spider's Web': Stieg Larsson's Heroine Returns". NPR.org. 31 March 2015. Retrieved 31 March 2015.

External links

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