Significant Other Says Larsson Would Be “Furious” At Ghostwriter
Eva Gabrielsson says that her long-time partner Stieg Larsson would be furious if his final novel in the Millennium series was finished by a ghostwriter.
Gabrielsson had hoped to finish the novel herself as to keep it faithful to Stieg’s original idea. Unfortunately, because they were not married, Larsson’s family is not allowing her to do it.
Larsson did start the fourth novel in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, which Gabrielsson says is set in Canada.
“You don’t publish a third of a book so I did make an offer to the family to finish it,” said Gabrielsson.
“I needed legal rights to do so but they wouldn’t give them to me. I did it in good faith. I thought it was my duty to Stieg.”
She is concerned the story will be completed by a ghost-writer who, unlike her, didn’t know Larsson’s plans for his book.
“I’m really afraid of ghost-writers,” she said. “It’s just a horrible idea. Stieg would be furious.”
Even though the estate of Stieg Larsson is worth millions of dollars, Eva Gabrielsson wasn’t interested in the money – only control of his novels.
“The issue, for me, has never been the money. I wanted to help manage the literary estate – to ensure things weren’t lost or rewritten in translation or that selling of the film rights would take place three or four years after the books were published so you could get the readers’ reaction to them and see what should be left in and taken out.”