For nearly four decades, Wendy Lesser's primary source of information about three Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway, and Denmark - was mystery and crime novels, and the murders committed and solved in their pages. Having never visited the region, Lesser constructed a fictional Scandinavia, something between a map, a portrait, and a cultural history of a place that both existed and did not exist. With vivid storytelling and an astonishing command of the literature, Wendy Lesser's Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery illuminates the vast, peculiar world of this imagined Scandinavia - first as it appears on the page, then as it grows in her mind, and finally as it exists in reality.
About the book
For nearly four decades, Wendy Lesser's primary source of information about three Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway, and Denmark - was mystery and crime novels, and the murders committed and solved in their pages. Having never visited the region, Lesser constructed a fictional Scandinavia, something between a map, a portrait, and a cultural history of a place that both existed and did not exist. With vivid storytelling and an astonishing command of the literature, Wendy Lesser's Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery illuminates the vast, peculiar world of this imagined Scandinavia - first as it appears on the page, then as it grows in her mind, and finally as it exists in reality.