Assar Bubbla (Swedish)

The story of the grand thief Assar Bubbles and about the briefcase he stole one spring day long ago. And about how close it was that there was therefore no book about Pippi Longstocking. Because Assar Bubbles could hypnotize people and that's what he did one day when he sat opposite Astrid Lindgren He made her forget her brown briefcase when she got off at a stop.The book is a bit of a meta-history in which Astrid Lindgren herself and Pippi Longstocking appear. The story was originally published in Fjärde läseboken in 1986, but the very next year there was a picture book edition with illustrations by Marika Delin.The story, however, as Lena Törnqvist pointed out in her book "Man tar ordinary ord - to read about Astrid Lindgren", had a longer prehistory. In the spring of 1951, Astrid Lindgren had lost a portfolio with important manuscripts. Aftonbladet then wrote a notice that the briefcase contained a shorthand Pippi manuscript, which was not true. A public school teacher named Gerda Chambert had seen the notice and given her class the task of writing a sequel. Aftonbladet in turn followed up by publishing three of the essays, one of which was about a Dangerous Fredrik who got hold of the portfolio and tried to blackmail. Astrid Lindgren then wrote to the school and told them that it was actually "Filemon Bubbla" who seized the manuscript and became very annoyed when he could not read the shorthand. One of Astrid Lindgren's very last books had its origins in a forty-year-old newspaper notice and a school essay!