THE FIRST hundred pages of The Girl Who Played with Fire take place on the island of Grenada, where Lisbeth has decided to spend some time. Why Grenada? Because it was our island. And that’s a long story.
Early in the 1980s, Stieg and I happened to read some articles by African American journalists about the Grenadian people in the English-language magazine of the Fourth International, in which there was an entertaining account of the popular uprising that toppled the dictator Eric Gairy, who had often deeply embarrassed his country before the entire world … in speeches full of references to UFOs, in which he adamantly believes.
This spot far across the ocean intrigued us. With its crazy mix of social democracy and Trotskyism, it seemed to enjoy a humanist attitude graced with something of a sense of humor. Stieg and I spent the summer of 1981 on this island dominated by its slumbering volcano, with its roads flanked by dense jungle. Flying out of Luxemburg, we first touched down, like Lisbeth, in Barbados, where we changed planes to a puddle jumper. The pilot, a charming Rasta with long dreadlocks, landed on a tiny runway threading between beach and mountainside. We stayed at a place called Seascape, uphill from the wharf where ships docked, and we liked to stroll along the beach at Grand Anse, where the sand was as fine as powder and we could dive through shoals of colorful fish. But we were not on vacation, oh no. We were eager to write about what was happening there, so we lost no time in making appointments with political figures. At the Ministry of Tourism, we learned that an ecotourism project was under consideration, involving small hotels integrated into the landscape and the local habitat, and meals based on local products. I remember in particular a conversation about shopkeepers who wanted to raise their prices outrageously. We were on their side and found that normal, since Grenada, like the rest of the Caribbean, must import almost everything, from auto parts to toilet paper. Stieg and I came up with a sensible solution: the implementation of two price systems, one more expensive than the other. It would be up to tourists and the more well-off islanders to choose a system in accordance with their means and their desire to help the population. Not a very practical concept, but it was certainly interesting to think about!
We would have liked to live there for years, but when that summer was over, we had to leave. As soon as we got home we contacted the Grenada Support Committee, and the Grenadian consul in Sweden, Eleanor Raiper, became a dear friend. We had wonderful times together, because Grenadians are jolly, fun-loving people who don’t get all bogged down in grandiose theories the way some of our friends do. We started a magazine, and to raise funds for the island cooperatives, we didn’t go door-to-door the way we used to, but instead organized “dinner-dances” where Caribbean food was served. A delightful way to practice politics!
In the fall of 1983, the United States invaded Grenada. Since I was working with Stieg at TT at the time to earn a little money, we heard the news as soon as it came over the wire. Then I remembered that when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, my father, who was a journalist, had had the bright idea of calling the hotels there. That’s how he quickly obtained eyewitness information, making his local paper the only one in the country to publish such scoops. Thanks to Eleanor, who had a Grenadian phone book, Stieg and I were able to pull off the same coup: TT was the only media outlet to provide interviews right away. When we learned that over 10,000 American soldiers had landed on our island, I burst into tears. Sweden hadn’t had a war in over two hundred years, and I somehow imagined that all 110,000 Grenadians were going to be massacred.
The description in The Millennium Trilogy of the rise and fall of the government of Maurice Bishop, the charismatic leader of the New Jewel movement, is of course the result of everything we saw on the island and learned later on. Writing about Grenada was a way of paying tribute to people who had given us much, and with whom we had been happy.