This biographical article is written like a résumé .(July 2020) |
Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of husband and wife team Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril (born 1966) and Alexander Ahndoril (born 1967), authors of the Joona Linna series. With nine installments to date, the series has sold 15 million copies in 40 languages. [1] The Ahndorils were both established writers before they adopted the pen name Lars Kepler, and have each published several acclaimed novels. [2]
The Joona Linna series follows Joona Linna, Detective Superintendent at the police's National Operations Department, [3] Saga Bauer, an Operational Superintendent at the Swedish Security Service, [4] and Erik Maria Bark (in The Hypnotist and Stalker), a trained psychiatrist and psychotherapist specialised in psycho-traumatology and disaster psychiatry.
In autumn 2015, Lars Kepler's sixth novel was published in Sweden, a stand-alone novel entitled Playground. [5]
On 18 February 2020, Albert Bonniers Förlag announced that Lars Kepler was the best-selling author of the decade – Swedish or international – in Sweden, across all categories, genres and formats. [6]
Lars is a homage to the Swedish crime fiction author Stieg Larsson as he inspired the duo to start writing crime fiction. The name Kepler comes from the German scientist Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), who solved one of his time's greatest mysteries: it was his calculations of the planets’ orbits that paved the way for Newton's theses about gravity. [7]
British media first pointed out Henning Mankell as the person behind the pseudonym Lars Kepler, but this was quickly denied by both Mankell himself and Bonniers, the Swedish publisher of Lars Kepler's books. [8] Several others were also suspected of being the author in question. In August 2009, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet revealed that the spouses Ahndoril were in fact the ones behind the pseudonym. [9] This was shortly thereafter confirmed by the couple's publishing house through a press release. That the two created a third, fictional author to represent them can be considered a natural extension of their early individual careers, wherein they both experimented with the blurring of the line between fiction and reality, and incorporating the author as a subject. [10] Most well-known is the example of how Alexander Ahndoril in his novel The Director (2006) crafted a fictive but plausible story about the director Ingmar Bergman’s life. Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril too has addressed this subject. In an article about the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, in the magazine Hjärnstorm, she writes about his way of working with so-called heteronyms, a kind of pseudonyms that act as independent individuals. [11] She gives her view of why an author might choose such a trope: “He has created the opportunity to write something that may not be true, but is at least not false. If both writer and feeling are products of the text, then the link between prose and experience remains unbroken". For the spouses Ahndoril, the pseudonym was a method for writing together without limitations, while the secrecy around it stemmed from a desire to let Lars Kepler stand on his own two legs, and have his books assessed without prejudice. [12]
Alexander grew up in Upplands Väsby, twenty kilometers north of Stockholm. He has always been an avid reader, but wanted to be a painter in his youth. For many years he produced big oil paintings inspired by Caravaggio. He practiced Muay Thai and was accepted into a ranger unit, moved to central Stockholm and studied philosophy, religion, and film at university. His first novel was picked up when he was only nineteen. Before he began writing as Lars Kepler he had already penned nine novels, twenty theatre plays, and one opera libretto. [7]
Alexandra grew up in southern Sweden. She discovered early on that she wanted to become an actress and attended the National Academy of Mime and Acting in Stockholm. [13] She thereafter got a master's degree in literary science, was hired as a PhD student at university, and began writing a dissertation on the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. [11] She produced three historical novels before she began writing together with Alexander.
Alexander and Alexandra married in 1994 and have three daughters together. They live in central Stockholm. [7]
The Joona Linna novels:
Stand-alone works:
The Hypnotist (Swedish: Hypnotisören) is a 2012 Swedish crime thriller film directed by Lasse Hallström, based on the Swedish novel of the same name by Lars Kepler. The film was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.
Harry Martinson was a Swedish writer, poet and former sailor. In 1949 he was elected into the Swedish Academy. He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos". The choice was controversial, as both Martinson and Johnson were members of the academy.
Henning Georg Mankell was a Swedish crime writer, children's author, and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most noted creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander. He also wrote a number of plays and screenplays for television.
Karin Maria Boye was a Swedish poet and novelist. In Sweden, she is acclaimed as a poet, but internationally, she is best known for the dystopian science fiction novel Kallocain (1940).
Sigvard Viggo "Sigge" Eklund is a Swedish podcaster, novelist, TV producer and movie director. His books have been sold in 16 countries, and his podcast "Alex & Sigge's podcast" is the biggest in Sweden with over 250,000 listeners a week. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two sons, and daughter.
Alexandra Pascalidou is a Greek-Swedish journalist, television and radio presenter and author. She is also a frequent lecturer and human rights activist.
Albert Bonniers Förlag is a publishing company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Albert Bonniers Förlag is part of the book publishing house Bonnierförlagen, which also includes Wahlström & Widstrand and Bonnier Carlsen.
George Klein was a Hungarian–Swedish microbiologist and public intellectual. Specializing in cancer research, he was professor of tumour biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm from 1957 to 1992, a chair created for him, and as professor emeritus continued to work as research group leader in the microbiology and tumor biology center. According to Nature, the department Klein founded was "international and influential". In the 1960s he and his wife, Eva Klein, "laid the foundation for modern tumour immunology".
Alexander Ahndoril, made his literary debut at the age of 22 with the love story Den äkta kvinnan . He has since authored nine novels, screenplays, radio scripts and stage plays.
The Troubled Man is a crime fiction novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell, featuring police inspector Kurt Wallander. It is the twelfth and final novel in the Wallander series. The pace of The Troubled Man is significantly slower than the previous Wallander stories, with several chapters between murders.
Wallander is a Swedish television series adapted from Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels, starring Krister Henriksson in the title role. The first season of thirteen films was produced in 2005 and 2006, with one taken directly from a novel and the remainder with new storylines suggested by Mankell. The second season of thirteen films was shown between 2009 and 2010. The stories are set in Ystad, Skåne near the southern tip of Sweden.
Nordic noir, also known as Scandinavian noir, is a genre of crime fiction usually written from a police point of view and set in Scandinavia or the Nordic countries. Nordic noir often employs plain language, avoiding metaphor, and is typically set in bleak landscapes. This results in a dark and morally complex mood, in which a tension is depicted between the apparently still and bland social surface and the patterns of murder, misogyny, rape, and racism the genre depicts as lying underneath. It contrasts with the whodunit style such as the English country house murder mystery.
The Hypnotist is a crime novel by the Swedish husband-wife writing team of Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, published under the name Lars Kepler. It was first published in Sweden in 2009 and translated into English in 2011 by Ann Long. In 2012, it was adapted into a film.
The Hypnotist is a 2012 Swedish crime thriller film directed by Lasse Hallström, based on the Swedish novel of the same name by Lars Kepler. The film was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.
Sophie Elkan née Salomon, was a Swedish writer and translator.
Ann Helen Heberlein is a Swedish academic and author, who writes extensively on theology and ethics. She is best known for her autobiographical account of life with bipolar disorder, Jag vill inte dö, jag vill bara inte leva.
Elisabeth Rynell is a Swedish poet and novelist. Her novel Till Mervas (2002), the first to be translated into English, appeared in 2011 as Mervas.
Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril is a Swedish writer. She was born to a Portuguese mother and a Swedish father, and grew up in Helsingborg on the south coast of Sweden. In the early 90s Alexandra moved to Stockholm to pursue a career in acting before changing her focus to the art of writing.
Inger Maria Alfvén was a Swedish author and sociologist from Solna in Stockholm County.
Eva Lydia Carolina Neander was a Swedish journalist as well as being one of the most eminent authors and poets of the 1940s. On 22 February 1950, she disappeared and was found dead, frozen in ice in Lake Unden.
The 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded jointly to Swedish authors Eyvind Johnson (1900–1976) "for a narrative art, farseeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom" and Harry Martinson (1904–1978) "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos." The winners were announced in October 1974 by Karl Ragnar Gierow, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, and later sparked heavy criticisms from the literary world.
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