The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is the third novel in the Millennium Trilogy written by Stieg Larsson. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest starts right after the events of The Girl Who Played with Fire. Lisbeth Salander lies in a Swedish hospital, recovering with a bullet in her head. If Lisbeth recovers, she’ll stand trial for three murders. Alongside Mikael Blomkvist, she’ll identify those in authority who have allowed people like her, to suffer abuse and violence. She’ll seek revenge against the man who tried to kill her and against the corrupt government that nearly destroyed her.
When Larson was 15-years-old he witnessed three men gang-rape a girl named Lisbeth. Days later, he felt shame for not helping her, he begged for forgiveness, but she did not accept it. The event haunted him for years and inspired him to create the character of Lisbeth Salander, who was also a rape survivor. The accuracy of this story is unknown since a close colleague of Larson said that he overheard the story and retold it as his own. In one interview he did, he mentions that he imagined Pippi Longstocking as if she were a punk-rock adult.
Stieg Larsson died on November 9, 2004, in Stockholm, he was 50-years-old, of a heart attack after climbing seven flights of stairs to his office, because the elevator was not working. Soon after his death, manuscripts of three completed novels were discovered. He never intended to publish them, but these were later published posthumously as the Millennium series.
The original title of the book is “The Air Castle that was Blown Up,” but it was renamed for English markets.
The Swedish adaptation of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest premiered on November 27, 2009. Directed by Daniel Alfredson, starring Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace, playing the role of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander.
The Millenium trilogy was later continued by author David Lagercrantz who wrote the fourth installment “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”
