John Lindqvist: "This is why they took the Millennium saga away from me"

Published on February 24 at 4:53 p.m.

The book "Skriften i vattnet" (not translated into French) by John Lindqvist, had a tumultuous genesis. Ordfront

SEEN FROM ELSEWHERE - A novel by the Swedish writer was to be the seventh part of the Millénium literary series. The author explains why it was not so.

By Claudia Morgoglione (la Repubblica)

Imagine a Swedish noir saga, beloved internationally. The publishing house asks a renowned writer to write the seventh chapter, but then rejects it for “excessive sex”. The writer, who decides to publish it anyway – out of conviction, or perhaps out of revenge – only changes the gender of the protagonists: the middle-aged man becomes a woman, and the young woman, a man. This is not the plot of a bestseller, but what really happened to John Ajvide Lindqvist, master of Scandinavian horror, and his book Skriften i vattnet (not translated into French), against the backdrop of the Millennium series created by Stieg Larsson . To find out more, we caught up with him on Zoom, while he was on holiday in the Canary Islands.

LA REPUBBLICA. - John, can you tell us about the tumultuous genesis of this novel, which has just been published in Italy?

JOHN LINDQVIST - Millennium in…

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