SWEDEN: Astrid Lindgren, the Swedish author whose Pippi Longstocking tales of an adventurous girl with distinctive red braids fired the imaginations of children around the world for generations, died yesterday at the age of 94, Swedish news agency TT reported.
Ms Lindgren died at her home in Stockholm following a viral infection, her daughter,Ms Karin Nyman, told TT.
The author was born November 14th, 1907 on a farm near Vimmerby in southern Sweden. She wrote her first book, Pippi Longstocking, in 1944 as a present for her daughter's 10th birthday, after years of making up bedtime stories about Pippi for her.
The book, featuring the imagined antics of a freckle-faced young girl endowed with enormous physical strength who lived in a large house with her horse, monkey, a treasure chest full of gold - and no parents or other authority figures - captured children's dreams of freedom and power.
Ms Lindgren's "Pippi" and other books depicted a world of loving relationships and soaring spirits, and underscored the importance of empowerment, freedom and closeness to nature.
In Sweden, her works remain among the most sought-after children's books and are still more popular than such contemporary competitors as the "Harry Potter" stories, in terms of copies borrowed from public libraries, TT said.