Across Stockholm the power grid has gone crazy. Electrical appliances turn themselves up higher and higher and cannot be disconnected. As a sense of foreboding builds, people everywhere are struck down by headaches that reach an intolerable pitch. Then it's over.
Soon after, in morgues and cemeteries throughout the city, the dead start to wake. But they are not as they were in life.
With wry humour and compassion, Lindqvist illuminates what the return of the dead might really mean to those who loved them.
Mahler is alight with hope that his little grandson has been returned.
David and his son Marcus are devastated by the loss of their adored Eva and aghast and bewildered at what she has become.
Elvy is convinced this mass resurrection heralds the End of Days; and is desperately hoping her late husband isn't back to stay.
And the government can't work out what to do with its newly restored citizens - or even whether, having died, they are still citizens at all.
Equal parts family drama, social satire, piercing tragedy and disquisition on mortality, Handling the Undead is possibly the most original and compelling book you will read this year.
