born on September 25, 1935 in Stockholm, Sweden
died on April 29, 2020 in Landskrona, Sweden
Swedish writer
90th birthday on September 25, 2025
Biography
Maj Sjöwall was the first woman in Sweden to write detective novels and she remained the only one for thirty years. Born and raised in Stockholm, she studied journalism and graphic design there. She gave up her dream of becoming a “roving reporter” in 1956 when her daughter Lena was born.
She worked as a journalist and layout artist for various magazines and met journalist and police reporter Per Wahlöö in 1961. They married in 1962, had two sons in 1963 and 1966, and published their first crime novel together, Roseanna, in 1965.
Carrying the subtitle ‘The Story of a Crime’, Roseanna featured the detective Martin Beck and was the first in what would become a ten-volume series. The couple would first research for months and then write the books during “wonderful, long summer nights.” Maj Sjöwall described their approach as follows: “We sent our children to a farm and spent two months just writing,” sitting opposite each other at the table and writing down the chapters they had previously drafted in detail with pencils. The next day, they would exchange their manuscripts and type them up on typewriters. They finished the last volume in the series, The Terrorists, in 1975, shortly before Per Wahlöö's death.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö set new standards by creating a realistic character—Martin Beck, a detective who is unhappily married and plagued by indigestion—and weaving a Marxist social critique into the story of a crime. The authors’ critical realism revolutionized the genre. Places, characters, and police work were depicted authentically and in great detail; crimes and perpetrators were placed within a social context.
The novels were devoured by a predominantly young, politically aware generation and have been translated into more than thirty languages and made into films. Many of the authors who have since copied their concept have become rich, unlike Sjöwall/Wahlöö.
“Of course, I don't think our books changed politics,” says Maj Sjöwall, “but ultimately we exposed the very hermetic police apparatus and showed how capitalism is destroying the foundations of our culture.”
Maj Sjöwall continues to translate crime fiction into Swedish and has written short crime stories and children's books with co-authors. However, she never wanted to take on another major writing project because, as she explained, “I missed Per so much that I didn't have the motivation to continue writing novels.”
Text from 2004.
Addendum 2025: Maj Sjöwall died on April 29, 2020, at the age of 84.
(Translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2025. Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
[The Martin Beck series is] something very remarkable, a great series of novels about Swedish society which draws a picture of contemporary Swedish life with critical acuity and great force. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö have provided a multitude of brilliant and vividly human portraits of people in all situations: murderers and police officers, drug addicts and lawyers, car salesmen and heads of state. I believe this album of Swedish crime will live a long time.” (P.O. Enquist)
Per and I knew, of course, that we couldn't change the world with our books. But we wanted to at least warn readers that society was becoming more inhumane and that capitalism was becoming rampant. Today, it saddens me that we were right—and the development was even quicker than we had initially feared. Today, we have a society that is based entirely on consumerism, and I think that's terrible. (Maj Sjöwall)
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