In The Girl with Ice in Her Veins, the first female author of a Millennium series installment puts Lisbeth Salander’s niece at the center of a town’s violent struggle for mineral rights.
What was your relationship to the Millennium novels before you took over the series?
In Swedish, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is called Män Som Hatar Kvinnor [Men Who Hate Women]. I was drawn to the unusual title, and ended up binge reading the entire trilogy, because I had to figure out what happened to Lisbeth Salander.
You’re the first female writer of a series that famously involves brutal violence against women. Your books certainly don’t shy away from that reputation. How have you grappled with writing about those themes?
I wrote four novels before The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons, all of which explore violence in various forms. According to the World Health Organization, more than a third of women in the world are subjected to violence at some point in their lives. Violence is connected to power, and the desire for power creates a society where violence in different forms is prevalent—against women, but also in the form of environmental destruction and the erosion of democracy and human rights. All are rich subjects worth writing about.
You’ve made some subtle changes to certain characters in the series. How have you balanced putting your own spin on the series with a responsibility to carry the torch?
I’ve mostly been concerned with trying to bring Lisbeth and Mikael into the present. Lisbeth has found a new kind of purpose in engaging with her teenage niece, Svala, which opens her up a bit. It makes her more human and less of a superhero, as she’d appeared in previous installments. When it came to developing Mikael, I started to think of him merely as a product of his life so far: a hardworking man who has focused solely on his career and neglected his relationships in the process.
What do your writing plans look like after your final Millennium novel?
After the next book, I plan to write another trilogy together with a Swedish author, as well as finish a fourth novel in my series about Jana Kippo—the first, My Brother, is available in English—which I began but set aside to take on the Salander novels.
What’s something about your real life that might surprise someone who’s only familiar with your fiction?
Plenty. I live in an old farmhouse in a Swedish village with 12 inhabitants. I enjoy most things you can drive: cars, dirt bikes, snowmobiles. And I have a black belt in karate.
