Kurdo Baksi

"I never doubted for one single second that Stieg Larsson was on the side of the weak and vulnerable. He was always prepared to speak up for anybody and everybody incapable of making a case for themselves. And that was not all: he was willing to pay a high price in order to bring about change."

Stieg Larsson was founder of the anti-fascist magazine Expo and was shadowed and threatened by neo-Nazis and racists. As a journalist he thwarted them by writing profusely against them, and even directly to individuals. Several of his fictional characters were based on people he knew. Plots were based on articles and police reports that he had amassed or were inspired by events in his own life. His method for writing was unusual, completing a chapter of book one, then moving to book two, then book three, thereby developing all three plots at the same time. Knowing something about the author will be of interest as I read his work starting with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

This short book is Baksi's heartfelt tribute to his ethical, talented friend.

"My point is that the police don't take racism and neo-Nazism seriously." - Stieg Larsson… (mere)

Usually I'm do not read books about authors that I like. For this one I made an exception, I'm not quite sure why exactly, but I'm glad I did, even though the book has found a hiding place on my books shelf for some time.

Okay, to the book then.
I liked it a lot. Especially because it is a friend's recollection of Larsson, without pretending to be exhaustive or unprejudiced. Just a recollection of their times together, how they worked, what made them friends and how their work for anti-racist, anti-nazist groups & magazines bound them.
A story about how driven he was to make Sweden (or even better, the world!) a better place, by telling all wo wanted and didn't want to hear about the injustice that was being done, the danger of right extremist groups growing in Europe, the poor situation of women all over the world.

The latter part was not a part of the author that was know to me. I dn't know if many of the readers that read his Millennium-trilogy are aware of this side of him. How he lived. All knew that he died when his trilogy got published, but I found it very interesting to learn about the other part of his life, since that was more important to him than the Millennium books or fame.

It gave me a more complete idea of the author of Millennium an dI'm glad that I read this book :-)… (mere)

It's an interesting small book. Memories of a friend. The author of this book appears in the third part of the Millenium Trilogy as a fictional owner and publisher of Millennium friendly magazine on immigrant and racist issues. Which he actually is in real life, and a long term Larsson's friend. The book is not really a biography, it's an expanded (into 140 pages) eulogy. It shows Larsson as a tireless champion for the disadvantaged- immigrants, women, and people of other races; never sleeping, completely dedicated to his cause, chain-smoking and coffee drinking, and with some characteristics of both Bloomkvist and Salander.… (mere)