ANYONE who is not aware of author Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy of thrillers, must have been in an oxygen tent for the past two years.
All three page-turners have created the greatest publishing ruckus not seen since J. K Rowland’s Harry Potter series. The three Larsson books feature crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist and crazy punk heroine, Lisbeth Salander. Larsson’s book went on to sell more than 26 million copies around the world. Tragically, a few months before the publication of volume 1, Larsson died suddenly aged fifty, and he never experienced the global phenomenon his novels were to generate.
The intricate multi-layering of plots and astonishing breadth of detail are outstanding features of the Larsson books.
So, it is with alarm that I note in Stieg’s first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that he has published an astonishingly outdated profile of Australia’s economy.
He sets the scene for his hero’s visit down under by stating Australia has a population of 18 million (currently 22 million) and suggests Australia’s export economy is still riding on the sheep’s back.
In fact, iron ore, coking coal and gold are our top three exports with sheep and wool not even in our top ten exports. Our sheep farms and sheep numbers have declined markedly from those published in this book suggesting Stieg’s Australia is about fifteen years out of date.
What is equally worrying, is the Australian landscape scenes in the Swedish film which was made from the book. The craggy hillsides and deep valleys of the landscape look remarkably like Arizona rather than the flat lands around Longreach which is the fictional location of the sheep station.
At least we can be thankful that Mikael did not ask the local drovers if they spoke English.
Micheal Berry
June 8th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
I saw the movie (haven’t yet read book) and thoroughly enjoyed it, although the Australian outback sheep scene was laughable to an Australian with knowledge of the outback. The scene was filmed in Spain and utilized Spanish “sheep wranglers” according to the credits.
Of more interest to me was the background soundtrack during that scene which included the calls of Crested Bellbird (plausible in most sheep country) and Eastern Whipbird (completely implausible, especially in conjunction with Crested Bellbird). This continues the long tradition of foreign movies getting soundtracks completely wrong when depicting Australia or its avifauna. The earliest and most crazy example being using ths call of our Laughing Kookaburra in Tarzan movies set in deepest Africa!! R.L. Maleny
June 9th, 2011 at 12:18 am
One day. Xiao Ming another class …. a sudden “rush”(fart) a cry!!sitting next to a small U.S. scolded and said: Xiao-Ming Ah ~ if you could not make a noise,?