Saturday, November 14, 2009

Millennium - Trilogy

The Millennium Trilogy is a series of three bestselling novels written by Stieg Larsson. The novels in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, were first published in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively.

The trilogy has been made into three films, the first "Män som hatar kvinnor" (Men Who Hate Women) is available on DVD, but in Swedish with Scandinavian languages subtitles only, the second "Flickan som lekte med elden" (The Girl Who Played with Fire) had a cinema release on September 18, 2009, the third "Luftslottet som sprängdes" (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest) is supposed to have its cinematic release on November 27, 2009.

"Män som hatar kvinnor" (Swedish for "Men who hate women," renamed in the English translation as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is an award-winning novel by the late Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson, the first in his "Millennium Trilogy". At his death in November 2004 he left three unpublished novels that made up the trilogy. It became a posthumous best-seller in Europe.

Filming began in early 2008, and "Men Who Hate Women" (the film title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), opened in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland in February-March 2009. So far, it has been seen by more than 2.5 million people in those countries. In Norway and Denmark it is the most viewed Swedish film ever, and in Sweden total admissions are above one million.

The films have been sold to Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxemburg and Poland.


The Girl Who Played with Fire (original title in Swedish: "Flickan som lekte med elden") is the second novel in the million-selling Millennium Trilogy by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. The book features many of the characters that appeared in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, among them Lisbeth Salander, the "Girl" of the title and a social misfit hacker, and Mikael Blomkvist, a investigative journalist and publisher of Millennium magazine. Widely seen as a critical success, The Girl Who Played with Fire was also (according to The Bookseller magazine) the first and only translated novel to be number one in the UK hardback chart.

For non-Swedish readers of the book, it might be interesting to know that the character of Paolo Roberto is not a fictional character. He is an ex-boxer and TV-chef who also dabbled in politics. He is featured in some very important chapters and will play himself in the film based on the book.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (original title in Swedish: "Luftslottet som sprängdes") is the third and final novel in the million-selling Millennium Trilogy by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. It was published posthumously in Swedish in 2007 and was published in English in the UK in October 2009. The Swedish title literally means "The Air Castle that was blown up". Luftslott ("Air castle") is used in Swedish to designate a pipe dream.