Handling the Undead

ORIGINAL TITLE: Hanteringen av döda

NUMBER OF PAGES: 332

AUTHOR: Privat: John Ajvide Lindqvist

ORIGINAL PUBLISHER: Ordfront

GENRE: Fiction

Stockholm, 13 August, 2002. After a long heat-vawe there is electricity in the air over the city. Lights cannot be turned out, machines refuse to stop running. A collective headache breaks out, and Stockholm is on the verge of chaos. All of a sudden it is over. But something has happened.

Retired journalist Gustav Mahler receives a call from the hospital. The dead in the morgue have woken up. His own grandchild has recently been buried. Will now even the buried open their eyes? Elvy has taken care of her senile husband until his death. The funeral is to take place in two days. But in the middle of the night someone is knocking at her door. When David’s wife dies in a car accident, he prays to God to bring her back. But her return to life does not turn out the way he had hoped.

The dead return. What do they want? They want what everybody wants: to come home.

Handling the Undead is a story about our greatest fear and about a love that defies death.


Endorsements

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”A masterpiece.”

Horace Engdahl, former secretary of the Nobel Commitee. (in an interview in the magazine Focus, December 2006)

Rights sold

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ANZ rights (world English) sold to Text Publishing

American rights sold to St. Martin´s Press

Brazilian rights sold to Tordesilhas imprint

Bulgarian rights sold to Colibri

Complex Chinese rights sold to Locus Publishing, Taiwan

Czech rights sold to Argo

Danish Rights sold to Forum

Danish rights sold to Modtryk

Dutch rights sold to Signature

Finnish rights sold to Gummerus

French rights sold to Editions Télémaque

German rights sold to Lübbe

Hungarian rights sold to Kiadó

Italian rights sold to Marsilo

Korean rights sold to Monhakdongne

Norwegian rights sold to Damm & Søn

Polish rights sold to Amber

Russian rights sold to Azbooka-Klassika

Slovakian right sold to Marencin PT

Spanish rights sold to Espasa Calpe

Turkish rights sold to Pegasus

UK rights sold to Quercus