Håkan Nesser (born 21 February 1950) is a Swedish author and teacher who has written a number of successful novels, mostly but not only

crime fiction Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, ...

. He has won

Best Swedish Crime Novel Award The Best Swedish Crime Novel Award (''Bästa svenska kriminalroman'') is a literary prize awarded annually since 1982 by the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy. The winners of the award are: Winners {, class="wikitable" border="1" class="sortable w ...

three times, and his novel ''Carambole'' won the prestigious Glass Key award in 2000. His books have been translated from Swedish into more than twenty languages.

Early life

Håkan Nesser was born and grew up in

Kumla Kumla is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Kumla Municipality, Örebro County, Sweden with a population of 21,640 as of 2018. Geography Kumla is situated roughly 15 kilometres south of neighbouring city Örebro, and is connected t ...

Örebro County Örebro County ( sv, Örebro län) is a county or '' län'' in central Sweden. It borders the counties of Västra Götaland, Värmland, Dalarna, Västmanland, Södermanland and Östergötland. It is frequently culturally divided into the hilly ...

. His first novel was published in 1988. He worked as a teacher in

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Located north of the c ...

until 1998 when he became a full-time author. In August 2006, Håkan Nesser and his wife Elke (a psychiatrist) moved to

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

in New York. A few years later the couple moved to London since it was easier for his wife to find work there. Having returned to Sweden, they now live in Stockholm and on the island

Furillen Furillen (older spelling Furilden) is an island in Rute on the northeast coast of Gotland, Sweden. For most of the 20th century, there was a limestone industry on the island until it was closed to the public by the Swedish military in the 1970s� ...

in the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and ...

Characters and themes

A recurring

main character A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...

is called Van Veeteren, a detective in the early novels and later the owner of an antique books shop. These books play out in a fictitious city called Maardam, said to be located in northern Europe in a country which is never named but resembles Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland and Germany. The names however are mostly Dutch. With his 2006 crime novel ''Människa utan hund'' ("Human without Dog") Nesser introduced a new main character, Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti, a Swedish police inspector of Italian descent. He has remained the main protagonist in Nesser's crime books since then. Barbarotti is a more upbeat character than Van Veeteren and the books are firmly set in Sweden, although the town of

Kymlinge Kymlinge () is an area of Sundbyberg Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden. It is mostly a recreational park, part of which is a nature reserve ( Igelbäcken). History The area has been inhabited since the Iron Age. The name is known since 1347 ...

is fictitious and named after an "abandoned tube station" in Stockholm. In August 2011 he hinted on his own site that a future book (which became ''The Living and the Dead in Winsford'') would take place in the "county of

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

".Rapporter

Bibliography

Inspector Van Veeteren

*1993 – ''Det grovmaskiga nätet''; English translation: '' The Mind's Eye'', 2008 *1994 – ''Borkmanns punkt''; English translation: ''

Borkmann's Point ''Borkmann's Point'' ( sv, Borkmanns punkt ) is a prize-winning crime novel by Swedish writer Håkan Nesser, first published in Sweden in 1994 and translated into English by Laurie Thompson in 2006. Plot The novel is set in the early 1990s when ...

'', 2006 *1995 – ''Återkomsten''; English translation: '' The Return'', 2007 *1996 – ''Kvinna med födelsemärke''; English translation: '' Woman with Birthmark'', 2009 *1997 – ''Kommissarien och tystnaden''; English translation: '' The Inspector and Silence'', 2010 *1998 – ''Münsters fall'': English translation: '' The Unlucky Lottery'', 2011 ('' Münster's Case'', USA, 2012) *1999 – ''Carambole''; English translation: ''Hour of the Wolf'', 2012 *2000 – ''Ewa Morenos fall''; English translation: ''The Weeping Girl,'' 2013 *2001 – ''Svalan, katten, rosen, döden''; English translation: ''The Strangler's Honeymoon, 2013'' *2003 – ''Fallet G''; English translation: ''The G File, ''2014

Inspector Barbarotti

*2006 – ''Människa utan hund''; English translation: ''The Darkest Day'', 2017 *2007 – ''En helt annan historia''; English translation: ''The Root of Evil'', 2018 *2008 – ''Berättelse om herr Roos''; English translation: ''The Secret Life of Mr. Roos'', 2020 *2010 – ''De ensamma'' *2012 – ''Styckerskan från Lilla Burma'' *2020 – ''Den sorgsne busschauffören från Alster'' *2021 – ''Schack under vulkanen''

Other novels

*1988 – ''Koreografen'' *1996 – ''Barins triangel'' *1998 – ''Kim Novak badade aldrig i Genesarets sjö''; English translation by

Saskia Vogel Saskia Maria Desiree Vogel (born September 17, 1981) is an American author and translator. ''Permission'', her debut novel, was published in English, Spanish, Italian, and Swedish in 2019 and has been optioned for television. She has translated ...

: ''A Summer with Kim Novak'' (2015) *1999 – ''Flugan och evigheten'' *2002 – ''Och Piccadilly Circus ligger inte i Kumla'' *2002 – ''Kära Agnes!'' *2004 – ''Skuggorna och regnet'' *2005 – ''Från doktor Klimkes horisont'' *2009 – ''Maskarna på Carmine Street'' *2011 – ''Himmel över London'' *2014 – ''Levande och döda i Winsford''; English translation: ''The Living and the Dead in Winsford ''(2015) *2016 – ''Eugen Kallmanns ögon'' *2017 – ''Nortons filosofiska memoarer''; English translation: ''Norton's Philosophical Memoirs'' (2018) *2018 – ''INTRIGO'' (a collection of novellas: Tom (2018); Rein (1996); Dear Agnes (2002); The Flower from Samaria (2005); All the Information in the Case (2005)) *2018 – ''De vänsterhäntas förening'' *2019 – ''Halvmördaran''

Filmography

*''Kim Novak Never Swam in Genesaret's Lake'' (Kim Novak badade aldrig i Genesarets sjö) 2005 *Van Veeteren series **''Det grovmaskiga nätet (2000, TV)'' **''Återkomsten (2001, TV) '' **''Kvinna med födelsemärke (2001, TV)'' **''Münsters fall (2005) '' **''Carambole (2005) '' **''Borkmanns punkt (2005) '' **''Moreno och tystnaden (2006) '' **''Svalan, katten, rosen, döden (2006) '' **''Fallet G (2006) ''

Awards

* 1994 –

for '' Borkmanns punkt'' * 1996 – Best Swedish Crime Novel Award for ''Kvinna med födelsemärke'' * 2000 – Glass Key award for ''Carambole'' * 2007 – Best Swedish Crime Novel Award for ''En helt annan historia'' * 2016 – Honorary doctorate from

Örebro University Örebro University ( sv, Örebro universitet) is a state university in Örebro, Sweden. The university has its roots in the Örebro campus of Uppsala University, which became an independent state university college in 1977, Örebro University Col ...

* 2019 - H. M. The King's Medal for his work as an author

References

External links

Official website

Håkan Nesser
at

Pan Macmillan Pan Books is a publishing imprint that first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers, owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany. Pan Books began as an independent publisher, es ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nesser, Hakan 1950 births Living people People from Kumla Municipality Writers from Närke Swedish-language writers Swedish crime fiction writers Uppsala University alumni Sommar (radio program) hosts