Handling the undead

In Stockholm, thousands of recently deceased people wake up in their graves, morgues and hospital beds. The city has to decide what to do with them. Hospitals, families and officials all face the same problem: the dead are back, and no one knows what they are.

The book follows a father and his young son as they live through the aftermath. Their story is a family drama set inside a horror premise, and it is mostly about grief and loss, with the bond between parent and child at its centre.

This is a Swedish horror novel from 2005, first published in English in 2009. The pace is slow and deliberate. It does not run on chases or survival set pieces. It leans on psychological and emotional dread, with social, medical and personal consequences worked out in detail as the city absorbs the shock.

The author also wrote Let the Right One In, and the same mix of social observation and horror runs through this book. The question it turns on is what the living owe to the dead who will not stay buried.