And the news about Millennium 4 is ...
January 20th 2011 02:48
Eva Gabrielsson and Stieg Larsson
The world has been holding its breath forever, it seems, waiting to find out if there will a fourth book in the Millennium series.
The series – Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc – can count me amongst its collectively breath-holding fans, and so it was with delight I saw a news report today offering an update on the situation.
To summarise, we may indeed get a fourth instalment. Or we may not. Having read the whole news item, I can report that nothing has changed.
For those who have been hiding in the land of non-fiction for the past few years, Stieg Larsson joined Abba on the top shelf of Swedish artistic output with a trilogy of crime-thrillers which featured tortuous plot twists, tortured heroes and torture.
The fact that Millennium represents the biggest publishing success story since Harry Potter was made enormously poignant by the death of the author in 2004. He died of a heart attack, aged 50 and before the first book was published.
That means that the gazillions of kronor generated by the books has gone to an estate, and two parties are laying claim to it.
Larsson it turns out, was better at writing books than at writing a will. He died intestate. Neither did he have any children.
All that means his money should go to his family, says his family.
All that means his money should go to Eva Gabrielsson, says Eva Gabrielsson. She has a claim not without foundation: she was Larsson’s partner for 32 years.
Gabrielsson, who is an architect, also says she worked on the earlier novels with Larsson, and is capable of finishing the fourth, of which Stieg had completed just over 200 pages before he died.
She will not finish it, however, unless the question of inheritance is sorted out.
According to a statement by Larsson’s publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, “Only the estate, controlled by his family, can authorise publication of a fourth book, and they have no intention of doing so at the moment."
According to Eva Gabrielsson, only she can write the fourth book, and she has no intention of doing so in the current circumstances.
Time to stop holding my breath.
www.wordandfilm.com
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