Stieg Larsson's partner plans to complete final Millennium novel

Eva Gabrielsson, late author's partner, says the pair 'often wrote together' and she will finish the hugely successful crime series


Benedicte Page guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 January 2011

Stieg Larsson and his partner Eva Gabrielsson in 1990. Photograph: PA/Scanpix

Stieg Larsson's partner Eva Gabrielsson plans to finish the fourth novel he left uncompleted on his death. According to early details culled from Gabrielsson's memoir of her life with Larsson, Millennium, Stieg and Me, which is set for publication in France and Scandinavia next week, Larsson had written 200 pages of a fourth novel in his internationally successful Millennium series before he died. Gabrielsson wants to complete it because, she says, "Stieg and I often wrote together".

Larsson's partner has refused to reveal details of the partially completed novel's plot, but promised that its charismatic but damaged protagonist Lisbeth Salander "little by little frees herself from her ghosts and her enemies". And, she said, she will only finish the book when she gets undisputed rights to Larsson's work from his family, who inherited the author's assets when he died intestate.

Swedish journalist Larsson died in 2004, aged 50, before any of his three completed Millennium titles – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest – were published.
The crime novels featuring crusading journalist Blomkvist and punk hacker Salander have gone on to become a publishing phenomenon, with approaching 50m copies sold worldwide. But Gabrielsson is involved in an extended dispute with the author's father and brother over the proceeds from the books because the couple remained unmarried, despite being together for more than 30 years, leaving her with no rights to his assets under Swedish law. Reports of an uncompleted fourth novel, left on Larsson's computer and in Gabrielsson's hands, have been circulating for several months.

Millennium, Stieg and Me chronicles how the couple met and their struggles together at Expo, the anti-fascist publication Larsson founded in 1995. Larsson and his staff "moved around constantly to escape the Nazis who were harassing them", Gabrielsson writes.

And in a criticism of the Larsson family's handling of the estate, she sounds off about the Millennium "industry and brand", saying: "I don't want to see coffee mugs and other 'Millennium' merchandise; I want to see the 'real' Stieg respected." She has previously complained about the parasitic industry that has grown up around Larsson, describing the "mythology" as unbearable.

Full story at The Guardian - can't wait to read the memoir.