Hakan Nesser is the award-winning, best-selling author of over 20 novels - he is one of Sweden’s most popular crime writers. His most famous character, Inspector Van Veeteren, stalks the streets of a fictional Northern European city called Maardam, and his pessimistic outlook is a seemingly familiar trait of the ‘Scandinavian mentality’. But Nesser himself is a far remove from this: he lives in London, is frank and friendly, and likes very much to question the stereotypes associated with his place of birth. Introduced by Nicky Smalley (UCL Scandinavian Studies).