Few fictional journalists are content to just plod on regardless - they are either ruthlessly ambitious or terminally disillusioned. The spurs to ambition are many, but Lisa Marklund's Annika Bengtzon has a different reason for climbing the greasy pole...
She looked him in the eyes. "To get somewhere. I've already written everything there is to write about at Katrinesholm Kurriren: forestry supplements, auctions, municipal meetings, composting reports... I want to move on. (Marklund (left), Studio 69).
I've attended more council meetings than I care to remember, even written a forestry supplement... But composting reports? Do Swedish newspapers really carry composting reports?
There’s actually a problem in the translation that causes the confusion and it has to do with the word "report". In the Swedish copy, Annika Bengtzon/Liza Marklund uses the word “kompostreportage” which rather means news articles (or reportages, features) about composting than reports (and she does say it with some irony, of course, to stress how dull she now finds country side news). The English word “report” can be used to translate “reportage”, but here it gets the wrong meaning.
It’s true though that Swedish people are very nature loving and mind the environment a lot. We sort our garbage, recycle everything that possibly can be recycled, a lot of people do have composts in their gardens and these issues are widely discussed in media. But (thankfully, for us who do not care too much about worms) we’re not yet at the point of regular composting reports in the papers...
Sanna, Malmö, Sweden
Posted by: Sanna Camitz | September 13, 2006 at 01:08 PM
Sanna, you are a hero! This has been troubling me for ages. I am just reading Liza Marklund's latest novel (or more properly, latest to be translated into English) and this will be featured on Scoop! shortly.
Posted by: Philip Young | September 13, 2006 at 11:41 PM