Liza Marklund – Swede dreams on the Costa del Sol

Acclaimed Swedish author Liza Marklund loves life on the Costa del Sol

Scandinavia’s cultural stock has never been so high. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales are stuff of universal folklore, and ABBA’s melodies will still be reverberating around the world when the Apocalypse (eventually) arrives. But these successes were always the exceptions that proved the rule – Scandinavians could be relied upon to make safe cars, cheap furniture and an egalitarian, wealthy society. The more fun and thrilling stuff was best left to the Brits and Americans.

But that’s all changed in recent years. Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy has taken Hollywood by storm, and seminal Danish crime drama The Killing has been wooing TV viewers from London to Lisbon. Swedes have been at the forefront of this creative purple patch, and Liza Marklund is the latest doyen of the detective drama-rama.

As an international best-selling author, Marklund could live comfortably anywhere in the world. But it’s Marbella that she calls home, and it’s Marbella that was the inspiration, and the setting, for her latest novel A Place in the Sun, which has also been turned into a film. At the turn of 2012, Yellowbird Production company descended upon the Costa del Sol to shoot the film, employing some 200 extras for filming in and around Marbella, Nueva Andalucía and the Los Naranjos Golf Club.

Born in 1962 in the northern Swedish village of Palmark, Marklund grew up near to the Arctic Circle – an upbringing that certainly influenced the dark dynamism of her crime fiction: endless dark days and nights, unstinting isolation, ephemeral landscapes and hauntingly rural villages.

Like many a Swede, though, Marklund has been tempted south by the sunshine and warmth of the Costa del Sol. Dividing her time between Stockholm and Marbella allows Marklund to tap into her Swedish psyche when plotting her next novel, while still enjoying the supremely uplifting lifestyle that only the Costa del Sol can deliver.

The author’s most successful book to date is The Postcard Killers, which reached number one in the New York Times bestseller list in August 2010, making her only the second ever Swedish author (after Stieg Larsson) to achieve such a feat. In 2004, Marklund was appointed an ambassador for UNICEF and has been vocal on a range of issues, including HIV and Aids, child slavery and human rights abuses.

In between her writing, promoting and ambassador work, Marklund is an extremely private individual who enjoys the quiet life in the hills behind Marbella with her husband Mikael.