And Stieg Larsson, the anti-fascist who fought against right-wing extremists and who practically died while chain smoking at his desk, isn't a bad story either.
Do you believe that the real-life background of the series, such as the magazine "Expo" which served as the inspiration for the "Millennium" magazine in the novels, also played a role?
I think so. It can't be explained otherwise. My point is that there should always be something that triggers the fascination and the enthusiasm of the readers.
Even the Peruvian author Vargas Llosa once said that Stieg Larsson reminded him of Alexandre Dumas, the successful French novelist from the 19th century. Nevertheless, it's not the literary qualities of these works which attract a broad readership in the first place. I enjoyed them, yes, but they also made me realize for the first time the extent of the crudeness of the novels.
The films were obviously made by professionals and therefore the narrative is a lot smoother and somehow more meaningful than in the novels - they include so many details which are a bunch of rubbish. There are pointless descriptions, confusions in the plots: All this isn't included in the films. The director Daniel Alfredson and his team knew that they had to rework it well for the cinema. In this respect, I enjoyed the films more than the books - but they didn't get me really excited either.
First billed as a women's history museum, London's exhibition dedicated to Jack the Ripper leaves out the real story behind the legendary murderer. But it has managed to shroud itself in great mystery. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is among the international contributors to Kassel's new museum dedicated to the Brothers Grimm. But don't expect to take your picture with Cinderella at this artsy house.
Visit the new DW website Take a look at the beta version of dw. Go to the new dw. More info OK. This is a brilliantly orchestrated scene, if you can stand it. Zalachenko shoots Lisbeth in the head. She runs her fingers over her skull. She finds the hole, feels her wet brain. Near the end of the last book, Niedermann holes up in a brickworks that Zalachenko once owned.
When he arrives, he finds two Russian girls, a brunette and a blonde, who have been deposited there by sex traffickers. They are afraid to go outside, and are starving.
Niedermann brings them some soup. Then he grabs the brunette and breaks her neck with a single twist. The other watches, and puts up no resistance when it is her turn. Lisbeth believes that people are responsible for what they do, no matter what was done to them, and plenty was done to her. The trilogy is, to some extent, a revenge story—a popular genre. It is also, reportedly, a sexual fantasy popular with men—something else that may have helped to sell the books.
According to certain researchers, another sexual fantasy common among men is rape. Later, ashamed, he telephoned the girl and asked her to forgive him. She refused. He is said never to have forgotten this episode. In these three violent novels, no species of assault is more highly featured than the rape of women by men. Gedin says that he absolutely insisted. All the sections of the first book are prefaced with statistics on crimes against women.
The epigraphs in the third book all have to do with female warriors—the Amazons, and so on. Yet some critics have accused Larsson of having his feminism and eating it, too. There are indeed many such scenes, the most vile being the sex murders in the first book. It should be noted, however, that we never see those crimes. They are in the past—they are told to Mikael and Lisbeth, and hence to us.
Other crimes against women get curiously brief coverage. The episode occupies only one page. Another consideration that would seem to deflect charges of misogyny is simply the character of Lisbeth.
She is a complicated person, alienating and poignant at the same time. Many critics have stressed her apparent coldness. In the scene of her revenge against Bjurman, her face never betrays hatred or fear.
When the rape is over, she sits in a chair, smokes a cigarette, and stubs it out on his rug. He is tied up. Accordingly, some writers have called her a sociopath. Larsson, too, said that once, but elsewhere he described her as a grownup version of Pippi Longstocking, the badly behaved and happy nine-year-old heroine of a series of books, by Astrid Lindgren, beloved of Swedish children.
She has a ring implanted in her left labium. But she is not a sociopath. I felt terrible about what I had seen. The incident happened in at a camping site in northern Sweden. Three of his friends assaulted a year-old girl as Larsson watched. He was too young, too insecure. It was inevitable that he would realize afterwards that he could have acted and possibly prevented the rape.
Most readers assume Larsson saw himself as the gregarious over-sexed Blomkvist, but that was not the case, according to Baksi. In fact, Larsson was more like Lisbeth Salander. Both shared a distrust of police and preferred not to talk about the past and were bad eaters, living on junk food.
Like Salander, he drank up to 20 cups of coffee a day and smoked two to three packs of cigarettes. Friends never knew Larsson was working on the three crime novels, mostly working between 9 p. Though Salander was a whiz at mathematics, even attempting to solve Fermat's Theorem, Larsson was notoriously bad with money, nearly bankrupting Expo.
According to Baksi, Larsson hoped the eventual success of his books would help fund the magazine. Born in , the son of a decorator and a shop worker who often moved, Larsson was adopted by his maternal grandfather at the age of 8 and lived with him in the north of Sweden until he was As a teen, Larsson got involved in Trotskyism -- an interest that bonded him with Baksi.
Those who knew Larsson said he began writing the first book of the trilogy in Sign up to the Irish Times books newsletter for features, podcasts and more. Sign up. Fighting Words Roddy Doyle introduces head-turning young Irish writing. Book reviews. The Lyrics: Great Beatles songs have, somehow, become even greater. New poetry. Poem of the week: Mother. Poem of the week: At the Gotham Book Mart. Poem of the week: Twenty-One Questions. Women writers Putting Irish women writers back in the picture.
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