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    • 8 Fascinating Facts About “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”
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    8 Fascinating Facts About “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”

    Umito Posted on

    In The girl with the dragon tattoo, Disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist retreats to the Swedish countryside with a special mission: to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of a decades-old girl. As sinister details emerge, he seeks help from an unlikely source: Lisbeth Salander, a countercultural and intensely private hacker with a convenient disregard for following the rules.

    The novel, written by Stieg Larsson, launched a franchise that has now spanned several books and films (not to mention helping popularize putting girl in the titles). Here are some fascinating facts about how it came to be.

    The author is very similar to his protagonist.

    Stieg Larsson, like Mikael Blomkvist, was a journalist who ran a left-wing publication. Larsson’s was Exposurea magazine that he based in 1995 to denounce the rise of right-wing extremism in Sweden. However Exposure attracted a lot of attention, but did not generate huge profits, so in 2002 Larsson decided to try his hand at fiction, hoping that commercial success would help fund his journalism.

    The books were published posthumously.

    The girl with the dragon tattoo and its two sequels—The girl who played with fire And The girl who kicked the hornet’s nestcollectively known as the Millennium trilogy or the Millennium series, have achieved international acclaim. But Larsson didn’t live long enough to reap the benefits: in 2004, he deceased of a heart attack at age 50. The first book of the trilogy was published the following year.

    Larsson’s partner was involved in his writing process.

    The fact that Larsson went from never having published a novel to having three future bestsellers in two years was met with skepticism from colleagues and outsiders. Anders Hellberg, a journalist who had edited some of Larsson’s early work – which he describe has The New York Times as “impossible” – effectively suggesting that Larsson hadn’t written the Millennium series at all, and others have speculated that his long-time partner Eva Gabrielsson was steering the ship.

    Gabrielsson, also a writer, claims that Larsson himself wrote the unforgettable escapades of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, but she admitted to participating in the process. “The actual writing, the craftsmanship, belonged to Stieg,” she said. said The guardian in 2011. “But the content is another matter. There are a lot of my thoughts, ideas and works in there. While Larsson was writing the series, Gabrielsson was busy with her own book about Swedish architect Per Olof Hallman, and her research also helped Larsson choose where certain scenes would take place.

    Larsson was inspired by real-life murders.

    According to Memoirs of Gabrielsson“Every violent act committed The Millennium Trilogy was inspired by real murders described in police reports. In Sweden, once a conviction is handed down, the files enter the public domain and can be consulted. She cited three Swedish murders that directly influenced the books: Melissa Nordellmurdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2001; Fadime Sahindalmurdered by her father in 2002; And Catrine da Costaa sex worker whose partial remains were discovered in two trash bags in 1984. The defendants charged with her murder were not found guilty and the statute of limitations has expired.

    The English title of the book has nothing to do with the Swedish one.

    When we talk about the English title of Larsson’s first novel, a more appropriate expression than lost in translation maybe intentionally changed to something completely different in translation. It was released in Sweden in 2005 under its original name: Man som hatar kvinnorOr Men who hate women. But British booksellers recommended a redesign after publisher Christopher MacLehose acquired the English-language rights, so he proposed The girl with the dragon tattoo. According to Sonny Mehta, who published Larsson’s work in the United States, this change was partly motivated by fear that potential readers would be mistaken. Men who hate women for a self-help book. And as he explained in a 2010 BookPage interviewthe new title also shifted the focus away from the novel’s criminally misogynistic villains and instead placed it on the indomitable heroine, Lisbeth Salander.

    The Swedish title of the second novel, Flickan som lekte with an eldermatches his English—The girl who played with fire– but the English-language publishers have once again diverged from their Swedish counterparts for the third and final work in the Millennium trilogy. Luftslottet with springs roughly translated to the “air castle that exploded”, which became The girl who kicked the hornet’s nest.

    Lisbeth Salander’s dragon tattoo is supposed to be huge.

    Salander isn’t exactly known for her subtle gestures, so it makes sense that her fearsome dragon tattoo takes up a considerable portion of her back—in the Swedish version, of course. In The Tattooed Girl: the enigma of Stieg Larsson and the secrets of the most captivating thrillers of our timeauthors Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer and John-Henri Holmberg explain that Larsson describe the tattoo “extends across his back, from his right shoulder blade to his buttock” in the first novel, and mentions that the dragon’s tail extends to his thigh in the sequel. The English versions, on the other hand, place a pint-sized dragon “on his shoulder blade.”

    The English translator chose to use a pseudonym.

    Slight translation discrepancies are not uncommon in literature, but Larsson’s work may contain more than the average novel. Steven T. Murray originally translated the three books were a rush job for English-language film producers, and he did not have time to participate in much of the editing process once MacLehose committed to publishing them for readers. For this reason, Murray chose to use the pseudonym “Reg Keeland” for his translator’s signature.

    A fourth unfinished book exists.

    Larsson has written part of a fourth novel. In 2010, Holmberg—a personal friend of Larsson—said The Associated Press reported that the unfinished manuscript was 320 pages long, and it also revealed details that Larsson emailed to it weeks before his death. “The land is located 120 kilometers north of Sachs Harbor on Banks Island in September,” Larsson wrote. “Did you know that 134 people live in Sachs Harbor, whose only contact with the world is a twice-weekly mail plane when weather permits?”

    But Gabrielsson, who has the manuscript on Larsson’s laptop (or rather, from 2010), claimed in 2011 that it was only Understood approximately 200 pages. According to her, they didn’t really “stick together” and “it could be quite a difficult task” to finish the book, given that Larsson did not write from an outline or take notes. Still, she thought it was “doable” and explained that she hadn’t tried because Larsson’s estate wouldn’t grant her the right to do so.

    The series has since evolved without his involvement. David Lagercrantz continued the Salander story through three novels: The girl in the spider’s web (the basis for a 2018 film starring Claire Foy), The girl who takes an eye for an eyeAnd The girl who lived twice. Karin Smirnoff then took over with The Girl with the Eagle’s Talonsincluding the English translation hit the shelves in 2023.

    Learn more about the books:

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