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Author Gunnar Serner, also known as Frank Heller, was a first cousin of my great grandmother. He lived between 1886 and 1947, mostly abroad, after taking a PhD in Lund 1909. He never had any children but I have met his sister and three of his nieces, among them authoress Elsi Rydsjö (who recently turned 90). 

Serner wrote more than 50 books and was probably Sweden's greatest author of adventure novels during the first part of the 20th century. He still has readers and since 2004 there is a Frank Heller Society in Lund, having about 160 members.

My own relationship to his books is a little double. On the one hand, I find them a little bit too superficial to really be interesting (his characters hardly ever have an inner life), on the other hand they are very well-written, scholarly in a way that I appreciate. More than anything Serner was a linguist and I find it sad that linguistic elegance of his kind is so rare today.  As in so many other areas, when cultural changes occur, the informal wins over the formal.

And today I heard Gunnar Serner's voice for the very first time, in a recording of a radio interview from 1943. I must admit it was fascinating. This interview you can listen to in our voicebank, which will be active on our website from November 1.