BOOKS-SWEDEN/MILLENNIUM Lisbeth Salander is back as "Millennium" sequel, with a twist, goes on sale

Record ID: 142554

  • Title: BOOKS-SWEDEN/MILLENNIUM Lisbeth Salander is back as "Millennium" sequel, with a twist, goes on sale
  • Date: 27th August 2015
  • Summary: STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (AUGUST 26, 2015) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF BOOK STORE DJ AT MIXING TABLE, PEOPLE QUEUING OUTSIDE BOOK STORE VARIOUS OF PEOPLE QUEUING
  • Embargoed: 11th September 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Sweden
  • Country: Sweden
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAB6P1FDSJL6ZUAW2FX9BPTBBT1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The tattooed young hacker Lisbeth Salander is back in the sequel to Stieg Larsson's "Millennium" trilogy" but with a twist - a new author - and a contemporary backdrop that includes spies from the U.S. National Security Agency.
    The sequel to the late Larsson's blockbuster trilogy of thrillers, written by Swedish author David Lagercrantz, went on sale just after midnight on Thursday (August 27).
    At the stroke of midnight, fans were able to pick up their copy of "The Girl in the Spider's Web" at the Akademibokhandeln book store in central Stockholm.
    The plot reunites Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist and Salander, who this time is involved in a murky world of cyber security and artificial intelligence.
    Cesar Ingvarsson was among the people queuing outside the store.
    "I'm here for the new book and I'm very excited for the story, the further story about Lisbeth Salander and Kalle Blomkvist," he said of the two main characters.
    "I think he (Stieg Larsson) did fantastic work with the three books he did and I don't see a problem with a new writer. I think it's, I mean it's the development of the story that interests me the most and it wouldn't be possible if nobody else did it," he added.
    Student Olga Cheban from Odessa in Ukraine, said she had read all the first three books in the last week.
    "I want to buy it now during the night when it feels a bit mysterious and I think that if I'm in Stockholm and it happens in Stockholm I have to be here," she said.
    Nina Nilsson said she hoped she would recognise more from the first books which she liked very much.
    "(I hope) to recognise the characters, that I will still get a journey, that it will be just as exciting as the first time. I hope," she said.
    Per Lannevall from Stockholm was the first one to have his book signed by the author.
    He said he was a big fan of the Millennium books.
    "Yeah I really like Stieg Larsson's trilogy. He drowns you into the story and it's very exciting I think it's very thrilling to be in that story," he said.
    The books by Larsson, who died in 2004, have sold more than 80 million copies in 50 countries. Salander was made famous in the first, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", which was made into a Hollywood film with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in 2011.
    Lagercrantz, known for his autobiography of Swedish football star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, "I am Zlatan", was tasked with writing the fourth book, with the iconic character Lisbeth Salander being an important part of it.
    He said the character had changed how female heroines are viewed.
    "I mean she's an absolutely universal figure and I think she has changed crime literature. If you go back a couple of hundred years we have this princess in this castle, you know, waiting for this hero on the white horse coming to rescue her. Lisbeth Salander is so long from that character that you can be. She was the one that refused to be a victim, refused to wait for someone. She took her destiny in her own hands and she's not the classical female, you know warm with kids, she's something new. We see copycats all over, I mean she changed the way we see female heroines," he told Reuters.
    Lagercrantz said it was important to write a complex story in the way Larsson did, but using his own language.
    "First of all, he was the master of the complex story line so I understand that I had to have a story that was worthy of him, with a lot of threads coming together. But then it was also important the moral pathos of his books, you know, fighting for the suppressed," he said.
    "You always have to put something yourself in it. You have to feel at home. I mean good bits about Lisbeth Salander and Kalle Blomkvist. But if it is to be a good book I have to put my own passion in it, my own ideas so I was thinking you know a lot how can I you know get even more depth in her you know and what questions haven't been answered," Lagercrantz added, saying that one unanswered question had been how Salander came to be such an brilliant hacker.
    The book will be released in 25 countries on Thursday. It has already been translated into 42 languages and the first edition will be 2.7 million copies. There are also plans to make the sequel into a movie.
    It has sparked controversy in Sweden, with two childhood friends of Larsson calling the publication a "grave robbery."
    The first book in Larsson's trilogy was published in mid-2005. The Swedish title, "Men Who Hate Women", became "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" when it was later published in English.
    The two other books, "The Girl Who Played with Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest" completed the best-selling trilogy.
    Larsson died from a heart attack in 2004.
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