Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Millenium Trilogy: The girl with the Dragon Tatttoo


Once again, we have a brilliant book with a lame name. Title should've been something better; something more poetic to do justice to this brilliant work by Steig Larrson. Män som hatar kvinnor ("Men who hate women" in Swedish). What did they have against the original title anyway?? It is overall a brilliant thriller with a unique mix of the classical and modern Europe. The book manages to give you a tour of the Scandinavia region, especially the small towns. In this case, the author creates a fictitous town called 'Hedestad' in Sweden.

Mikael 'Kalle' Blomkovist is like any other inquisitive lead character you would expect in a bestselling fiction. The interesting character here is Lisbeth Salander: the girl with the dragon tattoo. Eccentric yet human, dangerous but unsure, her ferocity and queer nature is mystic indeed. This asocial punk’s silence, the irrationality, the memory: it might just start freaking you out.

The translation from Swedish is decent enough and keeps you glued with the old and the modern mysteries. Got my hands on part 2: 'The girl who played with fire' and I know I'll have to get the 3rd book really fast..

4 comments:

  1. Hey,I'd forgotten about this trilogy until I read your review here. You paint quite a captivating picture! I should get my hands on this. I loved the Swedish title by the way ;)

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  2. So you have gone truly international. Very nice. Is the translation really good? Its really a turn off when you read bad grammar in a book.

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  3. @Arun: Thanks for the kind words; even I found the Swedish title a league above the English one.
    @Gaurav: There are no apparent gaps as such. At some rare instances the characters' responses may not seem the best and you wonder if the translation is responsible. But you hardly bother as the story keeps you engrossed..

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  4. I finished reading this today.. The book's responsible for me missing office today and spending all of yesterday night awake, reading it.. But am i complaining one bit??? NOPE.. it lives up, every bit to all the praise u made on our august blog... cant wait to start reading the next one.. Thanks for the recco :)

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