Camilla Lackberg is the best selling Swedish author specialising in crime fiction. Her books are in sequence and the characters develop over the years and over her books. Not all her books are available in English and even less in India at present, but hopefully that will change!
How is this series different from most other Scandinavian crime writing? Say for eg, Stieg Larsson? Lackberg uses domestic settings for her crimes, friends and neighbours, local police, local detectives, the snoopy neighbour who provides clues. Even when she goes beyond the immediately domestic, say, in :The Hidden Child" where she deals with the Nazi threat on Sweden in the 1930-s and 40-s, it is still rooted in the characters surrounding the locality.The books available in India (amazon.in) are- The Ice Princess, The Preacher, The Stone Cutter, The Stranger, The Hidden Child, The Girl in The Woods.
The protagonist is Erica Falck, a writer by profession, who moves to her native Fjallbacka in the first book where her childhood friend is found dead in typically horrifying conditions, frozen in the cold in her own bathtub with her wrists slashed. Erica gets involved involuntarily in this investigation and with the investigator, Patrik Hedstrom. Of course I had started with a later book, and by then Erica and Patrik are already married. By "The Preacher" Erica is pregnant, and in Hidden Child she is married to Patrik and pregnant for the second time while Maja, her daughter is one year old.
I could go on about how great her books are and how well her characters have developed over the series, but this is not the platform for that. What I did want to discuss here are the practices used in the workplace in Sweden as becomes quite obvious in the books. Erica is a writer of course and writers are the same lot in any country. A statement made in The Ice Princess says- writers are not a well paid lot, and Im sure lots of writers around the world will agree with that.
But what becomes stark in the books is the practice of paternity leave. Sweden has the practice of giving fathers 60 days off specifically, and 480 days off per child, which can be shared between father and mother. Here is what the Baby Project blog http://www.npr.org/blogs/babyproject/2011/08/09/139121410/parental-leave-the-swedes-are-the-most-generous has to say about paternity leave and about Swedish practices in particular:
In the U.S., federal law allows men and women to take three months. Some work places will allow for more, unpaid. But the law doesn't mandate that companies pay anyone time to spend with their babies — and many people simply can't afford to take time off... Of course, the time allotted varies country to country. Some places, like the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia, give new moms 45 days or fewer.As NPR's Phil Reeves reports tonight on All Things Considered, Sweden has some of the most generous parental leave laws in the world — and the government not only considers the mother, but also the father.
Parents are allocated a total of 480 days per child, which they can take any time until the child is 8 years old. They can share these days, although 60 are allocated specifically to the father. And they are entitled to receive 80 percent of their wages, although this is capped at a certain level.Paternity leave around the world is harder to chart than maternity leave. In some cases, fathers can tap into the same benefits that mothers get. In other cases — such as Sweden, Norway and Iceland — they have time specifically dedicated to them. Yet in many countries, fathers don't have any time allotted to them at all. A few examples of paternity policies are listed by the International Labour Organization (see page 46).
In Sweden, Reeves reports that dads seem happy. He spoke to men who say the law has really helped them bond with their kids... Still, Swedish men still tend to be better paid than women; this means the family loses more income if fathers take the leave. This helps explain why, according to Swedish government figures, women still take 75 percent of the allocation.
The bit about paternity leave in Sweden rings true in the books. Patrik takes his paternity leave and though he is pulled to work by interest, he is repeatedly told by his colleagues that he should not be coming in and he should use the time to bond with his daughter.
This is the time when even Erica gets back to her writing having spent a year taking care of the baby. Gender equality glares me in the face, especially due to the lack of it in India. India of course has 6 months paid maternity leave and no paternity leave. In fact, even now, fathers are not expected to be equal in child rearing. Their role is quite limited to taking kids out on weekends and paying for the tuition. (Though I have a colleague who devotes half the day to his sons, and has become an equal partner in spending time with his kids, very few men can even afford to do that, even if they wish.) If the mom has to devote her time to rearing the kids, the dad automatically becomes the bread winner, and his responsibilities ensure that he cannot take time off. It is too risky. However dads do know how to change diapers nowadays (the dad of my daughter does not, his excuse is that I do a great job anyway, so why try to fix something that is not broken) and would willingly take over part of child rearing. Times are changing in many families, and dads would love to have an equal opportunity in seeing their babies grow, be there to watch them take their first step and say their first word, even if it is MAMA!
This is the time when even Erica gets back to her writing having spent a year taking care of the baby. Gender equality glares me in the face, especially due to the lack of it in India. India of course has 6 months paid maternity leave and no paternity leave. In fact, even now, fathers are not expected to be equal in child rearing. Their role is quite limited to taking kids out on weekends and paying for the tuition. (Though I have a colleague who devotes half the day to his sons, and has become an equal partner in spending time with his kids, very few men can even afford to do that, even if they wish.) If the mom has to devote her time to rearing the kids, the dad automatically becomes the bread winner, and his responsibilities ensure that he cannot take time off. It is too risky. However dads do know how to change diapers nowadays (the dad of my daughter does not, his excuse is that I do a great job anyway, so why try to fix something that is not broken) and would willingly take over part of child rearing. Times are changing in many families, and dads would love to have an equal opportunity in seeing their babies grow, be there to watch them take their first step and say their first word, even if it is MAMA!
Gender equality and the difference in the generational attitude towards it is also evident in the mystery series. And these are things you wont find in statistical anlyses. The older generation thinks some jobs are meant for men- in the church, for example, or in the police force. This is reiterated in many places. However our generation (or Erica and Patrik's generation- they are 35) think differently and women do join everywhere and do a good job of course. The Ice Princess also describes how the woman preacher does a much better job in holding the attention of a non believer by her positive sermon, than the older male preacher who scared the religion out of the child Erica, by his account of hell fire. In Hidden Child a lady police officer has joined the tiny Tanumshede police station, and she is gay, to boot. The much older, previous generation head of the station is initially against a woman on the police force but changes his mind in the course of the book. And the way he handles the gay situation is commendable and shows a real development in the character at this point in the series.
However, on the negative side of society, the Neo Nazi movement is touched upon, and shows how foreigners are targeted by these groups and the threats posed to them in the workplace. This is probably the case in most countries where underground extremist groups target another group of people. India itself is full of extremist groups targeting "difference"- in caste, religion or language.
Being mostly domestic, there is not too much information about workplace, but the potent ones which comes out, are very clear and expressive of the open and equal society in Sweden.
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