Origins After his death, many of Larsson's friends said the character of Lisbeth Salander was created out of an incident in which Larsson, then a teenager, witnessed three of his friends gang-raping an acquaintance of his named Lisbeth, and did nothing to stop it. Days later, wracked with guilt, he begged her forgiveness — which she refused. The incident, he said, haunted him for years afterward, and in part moved him to create a character with her name who was also a rape survivor. The veracity of this story has since been questioned, after a colleague from
Expo magazine reported to
Rolling Stone that Larsson had told him that he had heard the story secondhand and retold it as his own. In the only interview he ever did about the series, Larsson stated that he based the character on what he imagined
Pippi Longstocking might have been like as an adult. Another source of inspiration was Larsson's niece, Therese. A rebellious teenager, she often wore black clothing and makeup and told him several times that she wanted to get a
tattoo of a dragon. The author often emailed Therese while writing the novels to ask her about her life and how she would react in certain situations. Larsson's friend and colleague
Kurdo Baksi believes the author was also influenced by two murders in 2001 and 2002:
Melissa Nordell, a model killed by her boyfriend, and
Fadime Şahindal, a Swedish-Kurdish woman killed by her father. Both women were killed at the hands of men or as victims of
honor crime. To Larsson, there was no difference, and the "systemic violence" against women highly affected and inspired him to take action against these crimes through his writing.
Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson's longtime partner, wrote that "the trilogy allowed Stieg to denounce everyone he loathed for their cowardice, their irresponsibility, and their opportunism:
Couch potato activists, sunny-day warriors, fair-weather skippers who pick and choose their causes; false friends who used him to advance their own careers; unscrupulous company heads and shareholders who wrangle themselves huge bonuses... Seen in this light, Stieg couldn't have had any better therapy for what ailed his soul than writing his novels." People who knew Larsson, such as Baksi and Anders Hellberg, a colleague of Larsson's in the 1970s and 1980s, were surprised that he wrote the novels. Hellberg went so far as to suspect that Larsson is not the sole author of the series, reasoning that Larsson was simply not a good enough writer. His partner Gabrielsson has been named as the most likely candidate, due to her chosen wording during at least one interview that seemed to imply co-authorship. She later claimed she had been misquoted.
Original trilogy by Stieg Larsson Having begun writing the first book in summer 2002, Larsson tried to get British publishers to accept his book, but was turned down until
Christopher MacLehose bought the global English-language rights of the book for his MacLehose Press, an imprint of the London publisher
Quercus. Both Gabrielsson and Murray have said that MacLehose "needlessly prettified" the English translation, this being the reason Murray requested he be credited under the pseudonym "Reg Keeland." and uses this same translation.
Follow-up trilogy by David Lagercrantz '' in Stockholm, 2015 In December 2013, the Swedish publisher Norstedts announced that a fourth
Millennium book, to be published in August 2015, would be written by
David Lagercrantz, a Swedish author known for being
Zlatan Ibrahimović's biographer. Gabrielsson has voiced criticism against this project, which has not made use of the unpublished material which is still in her possession. The Swedish title of the book is
Det som inte dödar oss, literally translated
"That Which Does Not Kill Us". Like the previous novels, the English language translation was published by Quercus. The book was released with the English language title ''
The Girl in the Spider's Web'' in the UK on 27 August and in the US on 1 September 2015. The fifth book in the
Millennium series was released in September 2017, once again written by Lagercrantz. The Swedish title is
Mannen som sökte sin skugga (literal English translation:
The Man Who Hunted his Shadow) and the English title is
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye. In 2017, Lagercrantz stated that he would only write one more installment in the
Millennium series. Lagercrantz's
The Girl Who Lived Twice was released on August 22, 2019. Swedish author
Karin Smirnoff was confirmed as the writer in December. Smirnoff said she accepted the offer without hesitation and stated "The
Millennium books are classics in their genre, where the combination of unforgettable characters and the strong political and societal engagement still fascinates readers. I will continue to build on Stieg Larsson's core themes, such as violence, abuse of power, and contemporary political currents." Smirnoff's second book,
Lokattens klor (literal English translation '''The Lynx's Claws'
), was published on September 29, 2024. An English translation titled The Girl with Ice in her Veins'' was published on September 2, 2025. Smirnoff will write at least one more book for the series, with the title and release to be determined. ==Novels==