A New Millennium Series Manuscript

Publishers Lunch

While there are still no signs that the late Stieg Larsson's unfinished manuscript for what was actually to be the fifth installment in his envisioned 10-book Millennium series will ever be published, the originating publisher in Sweden Norstedts has hired David Lagercrantz to write a fourth installment in the series. In turn, Norstedts has again sold world English rights to Quercus's MacLehose Press, the Bookseller reports.

Larsson's editor at Norstedts Eve Gedin tells a Swedish newspaper, "We are proud and excited to now have signed an agreement with David Lagercrantz who, urged by his agent Magdalena Hedlund, has undertaken the challenging task of providing Blomkvist and Salander a second life, in a fourth stand-alone part of the Millennium series." Christopher MacLehose tells the Bookseller "the sequel by another hand has been long anticipated and David Lagercrantz will keep a very great storyteller's flame alive."


The next interesting question is whether MacLehose and Quercus will publish the new book directly in the US, now that they have their own freestanding Quercus US line, or license the book to Larsson's US publisher Knopf. Either way, the Random House sales force will be handling the title, since the company distributes Quercus in the US.