There is only one person who can tell Stieg Larsson’s story other than himself, and that is his lifelong companion Eva Gabrielsson. There Are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg Larsson and Me is her book.
The keys to the “Stieg Larsson phenomenon” all lie with Stieg Larsson the man. No one knew him like his Gabrielsson. Here she tells the story of their 30-year romance, of Stieg’s life-long struggle to expose Sweden’s Neo-Nazis, of his struggle to keep the magazine he founded, Expo, alive, his difficult relationships with his immediate family, and the joy and relief he discovered writing the Millennium Trilogy. Above all, this is a love story, and we come to understand, reading There Are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg Larsson and Me, that if there was another secret besides Larsson’s own imagination and convictions, it was his absolute love for his companion and her nurturing of their privacy and shared passions.
There Are Things I Want You to Know is told as a series of short vignettes, with titles ranging from “Speaking of Coffee,” and “Stieg’s Journalistic Credo,” to “Goodbyes,” and “The Fourth Volume.” She speaks with rare candor and dignity, inspired only by the truth as she knows it. The book is thus short and to the point, poignant in its account of two soul mates and the life they shared, deeply insightful into the man everyone wants to know better, about whom so little is known.
I would have preferred to have never written this book. It speaks of Stieg, of our life together, and of my life after his death,” writes Gabrielsson early in her book. It was written because she alone can tell this story.
An international bestseller, There Are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg Larsson and Me has been featured on The Today Show (June 2011), in Vanity Fair (July 2011), The New York Times (July 2011), on National Public Radio (June 2011), and in many other places. The paperback edition is now available, which Ms. Gabrielsson will be happy to sign at the end of the program. The book will be for sale at Scandinavia House and is also available through Seven Stories Press, Amazon, and many other retailers.
About the author:
Eva Gabrielsson is an architect, author and political activist. Currently her architectural practice includes housing and office construction and heading a European Union initiative to create sustainable architecture in the Dalecarlia region. As an author, in addition to working with Stieg Larsson on his writing projects, she is the coauthor of several books, including a monograph on the subject of cohabitation in Sweden, a Swedish government study on how to create more sustainable housing, and a forthcoming study on the Swedish urban planner Per Olof Hallman. She has also translated into Swedish Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. As an activist, she works to stop violence against women. In 2010 she served as a consultant on a Danish adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by the Nørrebro Theatre Company.
Eva Gabrielsson and Stieg Larsson met in 1972, when they were both eighteen, and lived and wrote together from 1974 until his death in 2004. Their struggle together for social justice was the basis for the books in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.
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Photo by the American-Scandinavian Foundation
TUE – 5-29-2012 – 6:30 PM
free