"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson




The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (original title in Swedish: Män som hatar kvinnor, "Men Who Hate Women") is a crime novel by the late Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson (1954–2004) which was published posthumously in 2005 to become an international best-seller. Larsson spoke of an incident which he said occurred when he was 15: he stood by as three men gang-raped an acquaintance of his named Lisbeth. Days later, racked with guilt for having done nothing to help her, he begged her forgiveness—which she refused. The incident, he said, haunted him for years afterward, and in part inspired him to create a character named Lisbeth who was also a rape survivor. The veracity of this story has been questioned since Larsson's death, after a colleague from Expo magazine reported to Rolling Stone that Larsson had told him that he had heard the story secondhand and retold it as his own. The murder of Catrine da Costa was also an inspiration when he wrote the book.

With the exception of the fictional Hedestad, the novel takes place in actual Swedish towns. The magazine Millennium in the books has characteristics similar to that of Larsson's magazine, Expo, such as its socio-political leanings and its financial difficulties.

The novel was released to great acclaim in Sweden and later, on its publication in many other European countries. In the original language, it won Sweden's Glass Key Award in 2006 for best crime novel of the year. It also won the 2008 Boeke Prize, and in 2009 the Galaxy British Book Awards for Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year, and the prestigious Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

he Girl with the Dragon Tattoo debuted at number four on The New York Times Best Seller list and had sold over 3.4 million copies in hardcover or ebook formats, and 15 million copies altogether, in the United States.

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