Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

NOR

Fifth Millennium book is finished, author reveals plot details

Good news, Lisbeth Salander fans: Swedish author David Lagercrantz has revealed that the fifth book in the Millennium series is now finished.

Published: 17 February 2017 12:28 CET

Fifth Millennium book is finished, author reveals plot details

David Lagercrantz has been tasked with continuing original author Stieg Larsson's Millennium series. Photo: Vilhelm Stokstad/TT

The book, due to be released in September, has the Swedish title “The Man who Chased his Shadow” (Mannen som sökte sin skugga). Like all of the other books in the series, Salander will be the main character.

She will begin the novel serving a short sentence at a women's prison, where she is attempting to avoid conflicts between prisoners, and the tale will develop into a story of “state abuse, honour problems and shadows from a childhood that still haunts Salander”.

The cover of the new book. Photo: Norstedts

Lagercrantz wrote the fourth book in the series, The Girl in the Spider's Web, which was published in 2015. He followed on from original author Stieg Larsson, who died of a heart attack in 2004 before the first trilogy became an international smash hit, spawning movie adaptations and even a Hollywood blockbuster version of the first in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Continuing the series without Larsson was a controversial move, leading to childhood friends of the author criticizing the Swedish legal system for not protecting his work. Larsson’s longtime partner Eva Gabrielsson also vehemently opposed the move.

“They say heroes are supposed to live forever. That’s a load of crap, this is about money,” Gabrielsson said in 2015.

In an interview with Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter coinciding with the announcement that he has finished the fifth book, Lagercrantz said he has “to remain faithful to the universe created by Stieg Larsson”.

“The task of writing these books is an enormous responsibility, especially since the pressure from abroad is so huge. My job is to find a plot that will continue to make sense. In the end I have,” he added.

The Girl in the Spider's Web has sold six million copies since its 2015 release. Lagercrantz is also due to write the sixth book and complete the second trilogy in the series before moving on to a new project.

Lisbeth Salander is back in fifth Millennium book

Author David Lagercrantz. Photo: Vilhelm Stokstad/TT

The new book by the 55-year-old David Lagercrantz, titled 'The Girl Who Takes an Eye For an Eye', promised to reveal more secrets surrounding the mysterious Salander's troubled childhood and the true meaning behind her iconic dragon-shaped tattoo.

When Lagercrantz's 'The Girl in the Spider's Web', which received mixed reviews, was launched in 2015, he was met with overcrowded press conferences, journalists waiting in the queue for interviews, and he signed books until midnight.

The launch of the fifth volume is more low key as Lagercrantz will make no public appearance until he kicks off his book tour on September 10th.

'The Girl in the Spider's Web' was the first to continue the trilogy conceived by Stieg Larsson, who became one of the world's best-loved crime writers.

But Larsson's fame came posthumously as he died at the age of 50 from a heart attack in 2004, a year before the release of the first book in the series, 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo', followed by 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' (2006) and 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest' (2007).

'More banal'

While many Larsson fans rejoiced over the continuation of the trilogy when Lagercrantz was selected to write the fourth book, some – including Larsson's longtime partner Eva Gabrielsson – vehemently opposed him taking up the torch, calling him “a totally idiotic choice”.

“Everybody was very curious. We wanted to see if he was going to succeed,” Kerstin Bergman, literature professor at Lund University, told AFP.

“It was a good crime novel, very different from Stieg Larsson's,” she said, referring to the fourth book, which sold six million copies in 47 countries.

“There were introspective characters,” Bergman added.

Lagercrantz intends to transform the series and convince those who criticize his endeavour.

But as much as readers can't get enough of Salander's punk-rock style and feminist flair, the hype over Lagercrantz's continuation of the series is not what it used to be.

“Now it's more banal. People love characters and want to read about their adventures,” said Bergman, who is also a specialist in Nordic Noir, a genre that mixes crime fiction and social criticism.

“Continuing the series as it did is extremely unusual (…) it's an exclusively commercial project, but the choice of Lagercrantz is probably the best,” Bergman said.

'More sensitive character'

In 'The Girl Who Takes an Eye For an Eye', Lagercrantz throws Salander “into the worst prison for women, where she immediately encounters a lot of problems”, he told AFP in the spring.

Alongside Salander, readers will find Mikael Blomqvist, a talented investigative journalist who's also worn out by life.

As the duo investigate the abuse of power and the social injustice that Salander has gone through, they try to overcome new obstacles.

And if the author believes that Salander has seen enough in the previous crime novels, then the worst may be yet to come.

Lagercrantz has admitted that bringing this young woman with a dark past back to life in the books has caused him a headache. Contrary to Stieg Larsson, Lagercrantz said he would have chosen a heroine with a “sweeter, nicer and more sensitive” character.

In a relentless search for inspiration, Lagercrantz wrote on his publishing company's website that he interviewed “doctors, archivists, robotics researchers, Bangladeshi bloggers threatened to death” and visited a prison in south-eastern Sweden.

'The Girl Who Takes an Eye For an Eye' is to be published in 34 countries. Twenty-six of these countries, including Sweden, Britain, the United States, Germany and France, will release the book on Thursday.

A former journalist, Lagercrantz was previously best known for his biography of footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Lagercrantz has also signed on to write the sixth book, which he insisted would be his last in the series.

Article written by AFP's Camille Bas-Wohlert

Url copied to clipboard!