Salander is a world-class computer hacker. Under the pseudonym "Wasp", she becomes a prominent figure in the international hacker community known as the Hacker Republic (similar to the group Anonymous). She uses her computer skills as a means to earn a living, doing investigative work for Milton Security. She has an eidetic memory and is skillful at concealing her identity; she possesses passports in different names, and disguises herself to travel undetected around Sweden and worldwide.
The survivor of a traumatic childhood, Salander is highly introverted and asocial, and has difficulty connecting to people and making friends. She is particularly hostile to men who abuse women, and takes special pleasure in exposing and punishing them. This is representative of Larsson's personal views and a major theme throughout the entire series. In the series, Blomkvist speculates that Salander might have Asperger syndrome. Her mental state is never definitively described, an ambiguity that many antagonists in the series try to use against her: her sexually abusive public guardian, Nils Bjurman, describes her as "a sick, murderous, insane fucking person", while her one-time jailer Dr. Peter Teleborian describes her as "paranoid", "psychotic", "obsessive", and an "egomaniacal psychopath".
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Lisbeth Salander is introduced as a gifted, but deeply troubled, researcher and computer hacker working for Milton Security. Her boss, Dragan Armansky, commissions her to research disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist at the behest of a wealthy businessman, Henrik Vanger. When Blomkvist finds out that Salander hacked his computer, he hires her to assist him in investigating the disappearance of Vanger's grandniece, Harriet, 40 years earlier. Salander uses her research skills to uncover a series of murders, dating back decades and tied to Harriet's disappearance. During the investigation, Salander and Blomkvist become lovers.
Salander is played as an adult by Noomi Rapace in the original film.
Lisbeth Salander does not possess a moral code or moral principles: rather, she has a set of very sharpened moral reflexes that cause her to behave with ruthless consistency towards perceived injustice (i.e. violence against women) in her immediate world.
All the talk of Lizbeth’s sickness discounts the importance of what made her that way. She deeply loved, then defended with violence (against a violent monster, the only alternative) her mother. She visits her until mother’s early death, felt to be caused by the rotten life that man gave the two. Her heroism is called violence against society by the “justice” system. But with a child’s purity of thought, she knows society is wrong.
In the 2011 film adaptation of the first book, Salander is played by Rooney Mara, who received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress on January 24, 2012 for her performance.
The role of Mikael Blomkvist is played by Daniel Craig.
The Girl Who Played With Fire (2006)
Begins with Salander's returning to Sweden after having traveled for a year. Shortly afterward, Salander is falsely implicated in the murder of three people: Bjurman and two of Blomkvist's colleagues. The frame-up is in fact a conspiracy between her biological father, former Soviet spy Alexander Zalachenko, and the Section, an illegal faction within Säpo, the Swedish Security Service, whose members had protected her father after he defected from the USSR. Zalachenko had been a high-ranking member of the GRU, and his defection was regarded by Säpo as an intelligence windfall, thus leading to the Section's covering up his subsequent illegal activities. Zalachenko had his son (and Salander's half-brother) Ronald Neidermann kill Blomkvist's colleagues, who were writing an exposé article on Zalachenko and Neidermann's prostitution ring, and Bjurman, a former Säpo employee who would have been exposed in the article as Salander's rapist. The Section then falsely incriminates Salander to cover up their concealment of Zalachenko's crimes.
The novel expands upon Salander's childhood. She is portrayed as having been an extremely bright but asocial child who would violently lash out at anyone who threatened or picked on her. This was in part the result of a troubled home life; Zalachenko repeatedly beat her mother but escaped punishment because the Section perceived his value to the Swedish State as being more important than her mother's civil rights.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (2009)
Salander is arrested for the assault on Zalachenko, while she recuperates in the hospital. Zalachenko, who is a patient in the same hospital, is murdered by someone in the Section, who then tries to kill Salander; fortunately, Salander's lawyer (Annika Giannini, Blomkvist's sister) has barred the door. The would-be assassin then commits suicide.
Due to her deep-seated mistrust of authority, Salander refuses at first to cooperate in any way with her defense, relying instead on her friends in Sweden's hacker community. They eventually help Blomkvist discover the full scope of the Section's conspiracy, which he strives to publish at the risk of his own life. Salander eventually writes, and passes to Giannini, an exact description of the sexual abuse she suffered at Bjurman's hands, but written in such a way as to make it sound hallucinatory so as to mislead the prosecution.
Stieg Larsson planned the series as having 10 installments, but completed only three before his sudden death in 2004. All three were published posthumously: 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.
Stieg Larsson planned the series as having 10 installments, but completed only three before his sudden death in 2004. All three were published posthumously: 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.
The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)
Written by David Lagercrantz as a continuation of the original series, Salander is hired by scientist Frans Balder to find out who hacked his network and stole his quantum computer technology. She hacks into the network of his company, Solifon, and discovers that his data was stolen by a criminal organization called the "Spider Society", with help from accomplices within Solifon and the National Security Agency. When Balder is murdered, Salander, with Blomkvist's help, saves Balder's autistic son August from the Spider Society's assassins, and she is badly wounded in the process. She bonds with August, a fellow math prodigy, and becomes his protector.
Salander learns the Spider Society is led by her twin sister Camilla, a sociopath who as a child tormented her and delighted in the abuse their mother suffered at their father's hands. Camilla sends assassin Jan Holtster to kill Salander and August. Salander overpowers Holtster, however, and gives the police August's drawing of him. She has an opportunity to shoot Camilla during her escape, but cannot bring herself to kill her sister and allows her to get away.
In the 2018 movie, Salander is portrayed by Claire Foy.
Continuation novels
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (2017)
Written by David Lagercrantz as a continuation of the original series.
Lisbeth Salander is serving a two month jail sentence for the crimes she committed while protecting August Balder. After threats arise against her, she is transferred to maximum security Flodberga Prison, which she finds rife with corruption. She also discovers that Bangladeshi prisoner Faria Kasi is tormented nightly by ruthless prisoner Beatrice "Benito" Andersson.
One day, Salander is visited by former guardian Holger Palmgren. During their conversation, Palmgren tells her about a visit he received from a former secretary from St Stefan's, where she was committed as a child, who gave him Salander's medical files which has led him to believe she was involved in something called the Registry. Suspicious, Salander forces the Warden to let her use his computer, where she learns the Registry is a secret project that places exceptional children in specific environments to test the effects on their growth.
Unable to do anything from prison, Salander asks journalist Mikael Blomkvist to investigate in her stead, pointing him to wealthy businessman Leo Mannheimer, whose name was in the Registry file she found. During his investigation, Blomkvist learns that Mannheimer had been acting strangely lately and comes to suspect that not only does he have a twin, Dan Brody, but Brody has been going around pretending to be Mannheimer.
The Girl Who Lived Twice (2019)
Lagercrantz' third and final novel in the series.
Mikael Blomkvist is trying to reach Lisbeth Salander—the fierce, unstoppable girl with the dragon tattoo. He needs her help unraveling the identity of a man who died with Blomkvist's phone number in his pocket—a man who does not exist in any official records and whose garbled last words hinted at knowledge that would be dangerous to important people. But Lisbeth has disappeared. She's sold her apartment in Stockholm. She's gone dark. She's told no one where she is. And no one is aware that at long last she's got her primal enemy, her twin sister, Camilla, squarely in her sights.
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Lisbeth Salander
