TOM MALMQUIST is an award-winning Swedish author and poet. He was born in 1978 and made his literary debut with the poetry collection SUDDEN DEATH in 2007, followed by FATHER’S MILK in 2009, ALL THE AIR SURROUNDING US in 2019 and DEAD LEAVES in 2021.

His debut novel IN EVERY MOMENT WE ARE STILL ALIVE was first published in Sweden in 2015, and in English in 2018. The autobiographical novel depicts how Malmquist’s life partner Karin suddenly falls ill with leukemia whilst pregnant – the child survives but Karin does not. The novel has been met with astounding critical acclaim ever since its initial publication and retains an essential place in Swedish modern literary history.  After its release in English, the novel was recommended by the New York Times and listed as one of “100 Notable Books of 2018”. 

Malmquist’s latest novel RAGING WATERS was published in September 2023 by Bookmark.

Agent Erik Larsson

Published 2023, BOOKMARK
Genre LITERARY FICTION
Pages 432

ALL RIGHTS AVAILABLE

RAGING WATERS unfurls in the early months of 1990, as the acclaimed sports journalist Thomas Malmquist lets his son in on his latest scoop – an elaborate web of sports world corruption and match-fixing scandals. The story hits the Swedish sports community like an atomic bomb. It is at once the highlight of Thomas Malmquist’s illustrious career, and the start of his downfall. 

A decade passes, and effects of the scandal begin to resurface in unexpected ways. The protagonist is now the same age as his father was after the initial exposé of the manipulated games, when the threats began and his life started to unravel. Tom remembers his father’s final wish, the one that he, at the time, burdened by grief from the loss of his life-partner, was unable to fulfill: to tell the story of what happened. The reader joins the narrator on an investigative journey – digging through Sweden’s biggest evening papers from the time of the match-fixing scandal, reading old articles and notes. In parallel, Tom remembers his own promising ice hockey career that fell apart at the same time as his father’s career and health started to fully deteriorate. Striking parallels emerge slowly – illuminating his own role as a writer, partner, and father. 

In RAGING WATERS, the author, Tom Malmquist, embarks on a journey through the reverberations of his formative years. A dash of Karl Ove Knausgård’s compulsive self-exploration meets Alex Schulman’s interrogations of family and familial strife in this poignant, historically-infused exploration of the complexities of kinship and the resonating echoes of scandal. RAGING WATERS melds experiences from Tom Malmquist’s own life with the aftermath of a scandalous revelation that shook Sweden, intertwining the fates of father and son. It is an ever-shifting lens that navigates the depths of addiction and illness, a family pushed to its limits.

When the blues artist Nils' father dies, he cannot come to the funeral. A few weeks later, he still makes it over there, to revisit the memories of a place that he left twenty-five years earlier. It's a magical place, the Village, with hop farms, mining holes and with all of the original characters that live there. 

But it is also where Nils meets his old mother again, Gölu, who has a special relationship with the butterflies that can camouflage themselves as dead leaves.

Tom Malmquist's DEAD LEAVES is a warm and opinionated novel about finding home.

REVIEWS

"DEAD LEAVES is a novel with evocative power, which is carried forward by a great joy of storytelling. It is a pure tribute to storytelling, yes, to fiction."
- Sweden's Radio, Kulturnytt 

"I think you should read this book. Why? Well, it is as horrible, funny and humanly sentimental as this whole improbable existence."
- UNT