In Every Moment We Are Still Alive

By: Tom Malmquist, Henning Koch - translator

Narrated by: Tom Lawrence

Chosen by El País as one of this past decade's nine best novels about life and death.

The prize-winning, best-selling tale of love, loss, family and the lives we live moment by moment, from a stunning new voice in European fiction.

Tom's heavily pregnant girlfriend, Karin, is rushed to hospital with severe flu. While the doctors are able to save the baby, they are helpless in the face of what transpires to be acute leukemia, and in a moment as fleeting as it is cruel Tom gains a daughter but loses his soul mate.

In Every Moment is the story of a year that changes everything, as Tom must reconcile the fury of bereavement with the overwhelming responsibility of raising his daughter, Livia, alone. By turns tragic and redemptive, meditative and breathless, achingly poignant and darkly funny, this heavily autobiographical novel has been described in its native Sweden as 'hypnotic', 'impossible to resist' and 'one of the most powerful books about grief ever written'.

©2017 Tom Malmquist (P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic reviews

"It is not only admiration, but also wonder, I feel about Malmquist's way to face the grief with linguistic energy, to never lapsing into an already frayed image of death, love and longing - instead writing through, both death and love - but in its own way. The process of writing is a deeply personal struggle, a life struggle. ( Kulturnytt)
"People around me who lifted this book up have not been able to put it down. Nor will you be able to. Tom Malmquist has written one of the most hypnotically terrifying love books I have read. Heartbreakingly relentless.... This is a book written, not only in strong emotion, but also with a brutal skill. The first hundred pages of hospital inferno are like a single breath. There is no then, no later, just now." ( Helsingborgs Dagblad)
"Impossible to resist.... There is so much humanity in this book. Equally hilarious and unremarkable as rich in purpose. Just as dirty as beautiful." ( Expressen)