The name Stieg Larsson is one you may not be familiar with. The Swedish author of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo died before his novels became a global sensation, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t experience some wild things in his life.
One of the main characters in Larsson’s Millennium trilogy is a journalist for a left-wing news organization. This is very much a reflection of Larsson’s own exploits as a young man. Back in 1977, when he was just twenty-two years of age, Larsson traveled to Ethiopia under the cover of being a journalist. What his employer and the Ethiopian government didn’t know was that he had an ulterior motive for going on assignment in this particular country.
Larsson had also been tasked by his militant socialist brethren to train guerrilla fighters for the Eritrean liberation movement. Larsson made contact with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front or EPLF. They assigned him to an all-female squad where he taught these Marxist freedom fighting females how to fire grenades at enemy troops. Eventually, he contracted a kidney inflammation and was forced to leave after only one year. But not before he came under fire on multiple occasions.
On one such occasion, a bus he was on came under mortar fire. Having had mortar training during his time in the Swedish army, Larsson was able to predict where and when the mortars were going to land and guide himself and his fellow passengers to safety.
Not what you’d expect from your typical novelist, right? But these are the stories we aim to bring you here at A writer’s tale. Until next time……