The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the movie based on the first of Stieg Larsson’s three books, is very soon to be released in the US. The movie will first be show on movie festivals in Miami and Austin on March 5th and March 12th. See also our review of the Millennium movies on DVD.

On March 19th the movie will premiere on more than 33 theaters throughout the US! Here is a link to the news release from Music Box Films showing the locations. Exciting stuff!

The other two movies are scheduled to be released during the Spring and Summer of 2010. We’ll keep you posted!

PS: See also the reviews of the movie by Times Online and Telegraph (UK).

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

First two exceptional books – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

US Edition

UK Edition

Both books full of excitement, with multiple stories running parallel to one another. Each with a great ending, but each also with loose ends. And both ending in cliffhangers, making readers want to run – not walk – to the bookstore to get the next in the series immediately. Then a third novel – a firecracker of a book, and one which ties it all up. Properly. And more than properly.

It took less than a year for the Stieg Larsson flu to spread all over Scandinavia. It was much, much more contagious than the swine flu! The books were virtually hot from the presses when people bought them – since JC nobody has sold books like Stieg Larsson to the peoples of the North, the gloomy descendants of the Vikings, and the presses could hardly keep up. And it is not that those folks aren’t used to ok crime fiction – after all, Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Mankell, Fossum, Nesbo, and a bunch of other pretty ok crime writers are from the same neck of the woods. It is because this series, the Millennium trilogy, was something more than they were used to, something very remarkable – an engaging story with engaging side-stories within the stories, with extraordinarily fascinating and thoroughly modern heroes – perhaps especially the heroine, Lisbeth Salander. And – the icing on the cake – a series of books actually dealing with a set of issues considered important and real, and doing it in a compassionate and reasoned way, with the Davids – the outsiders, people almost like you and me – giving the Goliaths, or the powers that be, visible or not, some mighty knacks on their heads.

And now, several years later, the Millennium fever hits the English speaking world as well – as the last of the major languages. Last year Mr. Larsson from Sweden (who had heard of him in 2004?) was the second best selling author in the world! It started slowly, but now With The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest it’s taking off. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is an incredibly worthy successor to the previous two books in the trilogy, excellently conveyed to English readers by the translator, Reg Keeland. It is the book that ends the story as well as the stories within the stories. It brings them to a conclusion so gratifying that it made me ponder and experience a kind of grief and sadness in me, for the writer, the maker of these wonders, who will write no more.

When The Girl Who Played with Fire ended, the fiery Lisbeth Salander was suspended between life and death. It is probably not exactly a spoiler to revel that she survived. Both the tattooed hacker and the Russian gangster who tried to end her life are in the same hospital, Sahlgrenska hospital, just a few rooms apart.

So Lisbeth survived. But the stakes are still impossibly high. Now she is likely to be charged with three murders. Unless her father manages to kill her first, that is. The tension is as electrifying as in the first two books – it takes perhaps a hundred or so pages to really kick in, but be warned: when you’ve finished those pages you will have sunk it all – hook, line and sinker – and you will not want to get up from your chair for quite a while. The concluding volume of the Millennium trilogy is as unpredictable and magnificent as the previous two volumes!

In this third book in the Millennium series Lisbeth – the ultra-intelligent, slim, emotionally damaged Goth-like little lady, so lacking in social graces – seems to be completely cornered. She may die. If not, her father wants to kill her, and seems to be in position to pull it off. If she survives, she is likely to be charged for several murders. Unless, that is, that dark government associated and very powerful force that once placed her in an institution manages to have her declared as insane and sent back to a secure institution first.

Siding with Lisbeth is once again Mikael Blomkvist, an editor at Millennium magazine. His situation is even worse than in the previous book, as Lisbeth is now isolated, and unless something can be done he can’t even communicate with her.

Even so, facing strong opponents and impossible odds, Lisbeth Salander plans her ultimate revenge – against those who have harmed her as well as against those people who in order to hide their own dark secrets nearly destroyed her. Lisbeth Salander has been a victim, but now she is a huntress. Excellent planning, ingenious solutions and flawless execution will be called for if she is to succeed this time!

Praise:

“the completion of the trilogy confirms Larsson as one of the great talents of contemporary crime fiction” — Joan Smith, The Sunday Times

“Fans will not be disappointed: this is another roller-coaster ride that keeps you reading far too late into the night. Intricate but flawlessly plotted, it has complex characters as well as a satisfying, clear moral thrust.”

—Evening Standard

“Salander is a magnificent creation: a feminist avenging angel . . . Larsson’s hatred of injustice will drive readers across the world through a three-volume novel and leave them regretting the final page; and regretting, even more, the early death of a mastery storyteller just as he was entering his prime.”

—Observer

“Larsson has produced a coup de foudre, a novel that is complex, satisfying, clever, moral . . . This is a grown-up novel for grown-up readers, who want something more than a quick fix and a car chase. And it’s why the Millennium trilogy is rightly a publishing phenomenon all over the world.”

—Guardian

“[The trilogy] is intricately plotted, lavishly detailed but written with a breakneck pace and verve . . [Hornet's Nest] is a tantalizing double finale—first idyllic, then frenetic . . . Larsson has made the literary moods of saga and soap opera converge—with suspense as the adhesive. And, behind the quickfire action, those great chords of moral and political witness continue to resonate.”

—Independent

“[These are] extraordinary novels [with] astonishing impact . . . breakneck plotting, sympathetic characterization and the kind of startling denouements that occur more frequently than is conventionally considered possible. .. Be warned: the trilogy .. is seriously addictive.”

—Guardian (editorial)

Links to Stieg Larsson’s books at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon CAN, and Barnes & Noble.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

It was only a question of when the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson would go to Hollywood. The award-winning and best-selling Millennium trilogy has become a global sensation. It has now sold over 25 million copies in over 40 countries. Stieg Larsson was the world’s second-best selling author of 2008. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
was the best selling book in the EU in 2008.

According to The Wrap,

Sony Pictures is in final discussions to option the English-language film rights to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series.

And according to Hollywood Insider:

It was only a matter of time before Hollywood scooped up the rights to Stieg Larsson’s best-selling trio of crime thrillers, including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire; and the yet-to-be-released The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.

Slashfilm gives quite a spin to this piece of news. They are running a headline that says:

The Millennium Series To Become American Movies: Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the Rumors

They also speculate on

Ellen Page, Kristen Stewart or Natalie Portman playing Lisbeth Salander. Obviously, that’s going to be quite an interesting role to play!

It’s going to be interesting to follow this. Somebody has already established an internet site for the movies. I am sure it’s going to be a lot of hype, and that the sales of Stieg Larsson’s books will skyrocket.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

Lisbeth Salander

It is a strange story, the one about Stieg Larsson. The tale of the leftist Swedish journalist who spent evenings and nights at home, after work, with his fictional girl friend; a strange, thin, tattooed , somewhat cold-looking feral hacker lady. A lady named Lisbeth Salander. Smart, remembered everything she had ever read. Who could make a computer do almost anything but make coffee. A lady not afraid of snaring peoples PC’s and laptops, breaking into them and monitoring their every keystroke. What a friend! What a resource for an investigative reporter. But also somewhat lacking in communicative competence, somewhat rude and almost totally devoid of social graces. And with a dark, very dark, extremely well-hidden past – to some extend not even known and understood even by herself. Maybe modeled on someone he knew …who knows.

Mikael Blomkvist

And then, in sitting in front of his PC, in the darkness of the cold Swedish night, he matched her up with a guy resembling himself. Another journalist,from another journal – named Millennium instead of Expo (which was where he worked). Mikael Blomkvist was the name he gave him. A man seemingly very similar to himself. Smart, great communicator, socially pretty smooth, full of compassion,extremely concerned with justice (in a moral, not legal sense), with some leftist political tendencies, albeit being a financial journalist rather than a political one. And willing to take risks, to publish stories about the rich and powerful, to take on the establishment on his own, with scarcely any resources to fight. Also, somewhat disgraced and freshly sentenced to jail. Stieg Larsson even let Blomkvist fall in love with his lady of the long working evenings, Lisbeth. But Lisbeth, being Lisbeth – fiercely independent, remote, and ticking on a totally different timer – would not totally obey her master and inventor, Mr. Larsson. She refused to love Mikael Blomkvist back. Or, at least, to show it.

What an odd couple they are! How could they ever get along? Well, they somehow did – Stieg Larsson made them get along. And Stieg Larsson typed and typed, created and revised. For years he labored, and wrote three finished books constituting a tightly knit whole, drafted a fourth and outlined volumes five and six. Ten books, that was his plan, like the grand masters of Swedish crime fiction, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, and as Hakan Nesser in his series about Van Veeteren after them.

Today we know the three first books, the trilogy, as the Millennium trilogy: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (not yet released in English). We also know that the fourth book will not be published.

The Millennium trilogy was written within a long Swedish tradition of radical literature – Ivar Lo-Johansson, and Vilhelm Moberg, to name but a couple – and, also, critical series of crime fiction books and thrillers by radical authors such as Sjövall & Wahlöö and Jan Guillou.

And when the first three books were finished, and finally met his high standards, Stieg Larsson sent them to a publisher to have them published. Shortly after, and before they were published, he tragically died, without seeing his work in print.

And what a work it was! A strikingly original trilogy, containing vivisections of Sweden’s dirty not-so-little secrets, several doses of liberated Swedish sex, a tale of conspiracy, classical crime mysteries and large-scale thriller plots, all layered smartly one on top of the other, like a Chinese box. Three books, tens of stories and side stories, extremely intriguing and fascinating characters, with some sexual abuse, love and attraction, hacking, violence, and chilling danger thrown into the mix. With the ever present feeling of urgency, the need for more information and action leading to resolution.

In Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Germany the books have sold unlike anything else, in millions upon millions. And they are selling great in England and the US, but not nearly up to the levels one would expect. English and US publishers are bad at selling foreign fiction. And, for some odd reason, they can only publish one book a year by a foreign author. For the James Patterson’s of this world, the presses can be made to churn out up to five books in the same time. And, in addition to smaller marketing budgets for foreign authors, in this case we are dealing with a deceased author. So there are no TV-shows, no book reading events, or author signings. Thus, bloggers around the globe that have read, reviewed and loved the books have come to play a prominent part in their marketing.

An enormous number of blog posts have been published. Many offer bare-bones reviews, but many also give in-depth analyses, tell stories about the books, or take part in the lively and still ongoing discussions of them and their author in the blogosphere. Some bring news about the books or other related events, such as the filming of the books taking place in Sweden. They are all important. I do not know of any other books that have received even half the attention Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has received in the blogosphere.

And – what is more – the books deserve it. And need it, now and for a while more. Perhaps this is the best crime fiction trilogy in decades? It most certainly is my favorite for that title!

See also the teaser for The Girl Who Played With Fire on YouTube.

Links to Stieg Larsson’s books at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.