There was no chill in the craze for Scandinavian writers in 2011. The late Stieg Larsson is still huge, and an upcoming film version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" – still flying high at No. 7 on the NY Times fiction bestseller list – should bump his sales even higher. Meanwhile – even as US publishers scrambled to promote Jo Nesbø and a host of other Scandinavian thriller writers – Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Monitor blogger Husna Haq praised Transtromer's "subtle, multi-faceted poetry that explores man’s inner world, and his relationship with nature through introspective meditations."
Anders Wiklund/AP
