Born on this day, August 15 in 1954 in Sweden, Stieg Larsson was a lifelong leftist, and a journalist for anti-fascist and communist publications. It was his fiction writing, however, that propelled Larsson to fame. The Millenium trilogy, starting withThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005), became international bestsellers, adapted into films in Sweden and the United States. Larsson didn’t live to see the enormous success of his novels— he died of a heart attack in 2004, but his books still top the bestseller lists.
Before he ever conceived of the Millennium novels, Larsson had already lived a noteworthy life as a political activist and journalist and had achieved a modicum of fame and notoriety among Sweden’s politically aware. Still, Larsson had never abandoned his childhood passion for science fiction and crime fiction, and during the 1990s he drafted a trilogy of crime novels now known as the Millennium Trilogy, whose original Swedish titles translate toMen Who Hate Women, The Witch Who Dreamed of a Can of Petrol and The Exploding Castle in the Air. The books were published to considerable success in Sweden before being picked up by the small British publishing house Quercus and released under new English titles: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005), The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2007).
The trilogy revolves around Lisbeth Salander, a young computer hacker with a punk style whom Larsson described as his conception of a modern young-adult Pippi Longstocking, and Mikael Blomkvist, a celebrated investigative journalist whose personal history loosely mirrors Larsson’s own. Throughout the trio of dense, intricate and suspenseful novels, the pair team up to take on a serial killer with a deranged hatred for women, a Swedish sex trafficking ring and a rightist conspiracy within the Swedish security service.
Unfortunately, Stieg Larsson is not here to enjoy his novels’ staggering success. In a story that rivals his fiction for its mystery and intrigue, Larsson died suddenly at the age of 50, on November 9, 2004, before any of his bestselling novels ever saw print.
Because Larsson never wrote an official will (he did sign a will during his adolescence leaving all his property to the Communist Party, but it was not officially witnessed and therefore invalid), and because he never married his life partner Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson’s estate legally belongs to his father and brother. Nevertheless, in a plot twist worthy of his novels, Gabrielsson has possession Larsson’s laptop, which contains an unfinished draft of his fourth novel, and she refuses to turn it over to Larsson’s family. She claims that he was estranged from his father and brother during the last years of his life (a claim they deny) and would not want the unfinished work published. The two sides have yet to come to any agreement in this ugly and very public struggle to control Larsson’s legacy.
No matter the disagreement over his estate, all parties agree that Stieg Larsson was a brilliant crime novelist whose sudden and untimely death robbed the world of many more magnificent books.
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