Swedish author Marianne Fredriksson, 79 dead

Stockholm, Feb 12: Marianne Fredriksson, one of Sweden's best known and most translated authors, has died at the age of 79, Swedish media quoted her agent as saying.

Expressen newspaper quoted agent Bengt Nordin as saying Fredriksson died of a heart attack.

''It all went very fast, she died before the ambulance arrived,'' he said.

Fredriksson began her career as a ground-breaking newspaper journalist before turning to writing books in the 1980s after a mid-life crisis.

She wrote 13 novels and several non-fiction books. Her early works took on Biblical themes with a new slant, such as ''The Book of Eve'' and ''The Book of Cain''.

One of her best known works was ''Hanna's Daughters'', which told the story of the various difficulties in the lives of three generations of women.

Expressen said she had been translated into more than 40 languages and that her books had sold more than 17 million copies around the world.

Reuters