Sweden's most famous writer may or may not have been a Soviet spy

[Pat]

Sweden has famous writers? ... The more you know...

Karl Stig-Erland Larsson (15 August 1954 – 9 November 2004) was a Swedish journalist and writer, born in Skelleftehamn outside Skellefteå. He is best known for his authorship of the Millennium Trilogy of crime novels which are being published posthumously.

During 2008, he was the second-best selling author in the world, behind Afghani-American author Khaled Hosseini.

But I'm not surprised you wouldn't know since only 1.5% of books read in America are translated from other languages. Horace Engdahl was right when he called American literature too insular.

(Someone mentioned music as well - Sweden's the third largest exporter of music in the world after the US and the UK, a distant third, admittedly, but still not bad for a small country)