Liza Marklund has been awarded the Crimetime Specsavers’ Honorary Award 2018.
The award is to be presented to authors who have acted as pioneers in Swedish crime
literature and put Sweden on the international crime fiction map.
“I’m very honored. The previous winners, Maj Sjöwall and Kerstin Ekman, are major
role models of mine,” says Liza Marklund. The award ceremony will be held o
 September 29th during Crimetime Göteborg, Sweden’s biggest crime literature festival.
“Almost exactly 20 years ago, [Liza Marklund] debuted as a crime fiction writer with
“The Bomber”, the groundbreaking novel that fundamentally changed the Swedish crime
novel scene. Readers quickly embraced the female anti-heroine, reporter Annika Bengtzon.
Her private life and the current social issues that were portrayed in the novels were
just as important as the crime plot itself. The style of writing challenged the prevailing
crime novelnorm and gained many followers. Liza Marklund is one of our most
internationally critically acclaimed and successful authors and her significance for the
Swedish crimefiction phenomena abroad cannot be underestimated. With 15 novels
and one non-fiction to her name, sold in 23 million copies and translated into 40
languages, she has paved the way for a series of successful and talented female
crime writers.”
-The Crimetime Specsavers jury