The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (original title in ; in English: Men Who Hate Women) is a psychological thriller novel by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson (1954–2004), which was published posthumously in 2005 to become an international bestseller. It is the first book of the "Millennium" series. Larsson spoke of an incident which he said occurred when he was 15: he stood by as three men gang raped an acquaintance of his named Lisbeth. Days later, racked with guilt for having done nothing to help her, he begged her forgiveness—which she refused
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to grant. The incident, he said, haunted him for years afterward and in part inspired him to create a character named Lisbeth who was also a rape survivor. The veracity of this story has been questioned since Larsson's death, after a colleague from "Expo" magazine reported to "Rolling Stone" that Larsson had told him he had heard the story secondhand and retold it as his own. The murder of Catrine da Costa was also an inspiration when he wrote the book. With the exception of the fictional Hedestad, the novel takes place in actual Swedish towns. The magazine "Millennium" in