Michiko Kakutani's review of Lagercrantz's novel in Books of The [New York] Times provides another take.
Larsson's
Millennium trilogy was admirably translated by Reg Keeland (pseudonym of Steven T. Murray), as was Lagercrantz's follow-up by George Goulding.
I do have a couple nits to pick with the latter:
• Even though it was published in the USA, its style is strictly British. This is particular annoying when straight off an NSA email message/quote written by an American uses the term "no-one" instead of "no one", and this sort of thing persists throughout the book.
• Add to that the use of British slang most likely to be unfamiliar to North American audiences — for example,
stroppy 'bad-tempered and argumentative'. [And yes, I prefer the British grammatical usage of placing the punctuation (eg, period or full stop, semicolon) outside the quote marks at the end of a sentence/phrase if it's not part of the quoted passage.]
The editor(s) responsible should have caught such faux pas.
On a similar note I would remark that Timur Vermes's
Er ist wieder da was superbly translated by Jamie Bulloch with the title
Look Who's Back — see Post #35923 above. I read both cover to cover (and in that order) and the translation was true to the original, while being amenable to the English-speaking psyche.
All of these passed through the doors of MacLehose Press.
