‘There Are Things I Want You to Know’ About Stieg Larsson and Me by Eva Gabrielsson

Gabrielsson's memoir provides a revealing look at the novelist’s life and discusses her battles with his family over the rights to his estate.

(Seven Stories, $24)

If the Swedish author Stieg Larsson hadn’t died of a heart attack at 50, seven years ago, none of us ever would have read a book titled The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, said Deirdre Donahue in USA Today. Instead, millions of copies of Larsson’s debut novel have sold under that name in the U.S. and elsewhere, mildly betraying the spirit of a man who was a committed feminist and thus “would have considered it demeaning to call a 24-year-old woman a girl.” That’s one tidbit that an obsessive reader of Larsson’s Millennium trilogy can pick up while reading this “memorably austere” memoir from the woman with whom Larsson spent most of his adult life. A “warrior in fighting for what she sees as justice,” the fierce Eva Gabrielsson also emerges as a probable inspiration for the fictional “girl” in question—neopunk hacktivist Lisbeth Salander.

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