A teenage boy watches three of his friends rape a 15-year-old girl. The boy does not participate in the rape but neither does he do anything to stop it. Later he telephones the victim and begs her to forgive him; she tells him she never will. The girl's name: Lisbeth. This, according to Kurdo Baksi, happened to Stieg Larsson, and was the event that led to Larsson's lifelong crusade against violence against women and, possibly more significantly, to the 45-million-selling phenomenon of the Millennium Trilogy. All summer, the books were everywhere. On subways and buses, in rural farmhouses and on park benches, in every departure lounge and onboard every flight, they were a beach read and a city read, in good weather and bad. People, it seemed, just had to know what was happening to Lisbeth Salander.

LRB 16 December 2010 | PDF Download