Millennium (novel series)

Millennium
First Swedish edition cover of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo


Author
Translator
CountrySweden
LanguageSwedish
GenreCrime, Mystery fiction
PublisherNorstedts Förlag, Polaris
PublishedAugust 2005 – present
Published in EnglishJanuary 2008 – present
Media type
No. of books7

Millennium is a series of crime novels originally conceptualized by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Larsson completed three books before his death; David Lagercrantz penned the next three; and Karin Smirnoff is in the midst of writing the third trilogy. The two primary characters in the saga are Lisbeth Salander, an asocial computer hacker with a photographic memory, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of a magazine called Millennium.

Seven books in the series have been published. Larsson planned the series as having 10 installments, but completed only three before his sudden death in 2004.[1][2] They were published posthumously as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2005, The Girl Who Played with Fire in 2006, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest in 2007. Larsson's novels were originally printed in Swedish by Norstedts Förlag, with English translations by Steven T. Murray published a few years later by Quercus in the United Kingdom and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States.

In 2013, Norstedts Förlag commissioned Swedish author David Lagercrantz to continue the Millennium series with Larsson's characters. The Girl in the Spider's Web was published in 2015, followed by The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye in 2017 and The Girl Who Lived Twice in 2019. In November 2021, publishing house Polaris acquired the rights to the series from Larsson's estate and announced a new trilogy of books written by Swedish author Karin Smirnoff. The Girl in the Eagle's Talons was published in 2022.

The first three books have been translated by many publishers in over 50 countries; by March 2015, 80 million copies had been sold worldwide. With Lagercrantz's first two installments, the Millennium series had sold over 100 million copies worldwide by May 2019, making it one of the best-selling book series in history. The series has been adapted into Swedish and American films, as well as comics from Vertigo Comics and Dupuis.

  1. ^ McGrath, Charles (23 May 2010). "The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson". The New York Times Magazine. New York City: New York Times Company.
  2. ^ "The 4th Book - Stieg Larsson, the man behind Lisbeth Salander". stieglarsson.com. 2014. Archived from the original on 1 April 2010. Retrieved 6 July 2014.