Film version of 'Girl with Dragon Tattoo' stays true to novel of grit
23.05.12
When Stieg Larsson died of a heart attack in 2004, he was to many just a 50-year-old Swedish journalist, a reporter at one of Sweden's largest news agencies, Tidningarnas Telegambyrå (Newspapers' Telegram Bureau). Then they found the manuscripts.
There were three finished novels apparently intended as a series; an unfinished fourth on a laptop; and gists and writings for probably two more.
The first three eventually found print, and are now known collectively as the best-selling "Millennium Trilogy," after the fictional magazine run by the novels' main protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist.
Of course, Larsson was hardly "just" a journalist.
He was a Trotskyist, a member of the Communist Workers League, and later the founder of the Swedish Expo Foundation, all while conducting research on Swedish right-wing extremism and gaining a good number of political enemies.
But perhaps Larsson's greatest contribution to modern fiction is not the alternate reality where the political and racist predilections of big, moneyed entities are gutted from behind immaculate corporate façades.
Source: AsiaOne