Delusion (novel)
Verblende is the first volume in a three-volume series of crime novels by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson , which were published posthumously between 2005 and 2007 under the title Millennium Trilogy . The thriller was released in Swedish in 2005 under the title Män som hatar kvinnor (Eng. "Men who hate women") and has been translated into various languages. An English version appeared under the title The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Eng. "The girl with the dragon tattoo"). The German first edition, translated by Wibke Kuhn, was published by Heyne Verlag in 2006 , and a paperback edition there in 2007 . Over 31 million copies of the trilogy have been sold worldwide.
content
Journalist Mikael Blomkvist published a report in Millennium magazine accusing Swedish business mogul Wennerström of serious economic crimes. Wennerström charges Blomkvist with defamation and has the journalist who appears to have not researched the facts carefully enough to be sentenced to prison. Blomkvist withdrew from the editorial office of the magazine until he was imprisoned and accepted the task of the retired CEO Henrik Vanger to investigate the alleged death of his great-niece Harriet, who disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1966 (almost 40 years before the main story) is. Henrik Vanger provided him with the family archive and all the police records that were in his possession and that consisted of several hundred documents.
Mikael Blomkvist only achieved a breakthrough after a long time when he was able to use old photographs to show that Harriet had tracked down a serial killer and saw him on the street a few hours before she disappeared. Blomkvist also realizes that a supposed phone list from Harriet, which is in the old police records, is actually a list of the names of the serial killer's victims. Blomkvist then suspects that Harriet was also eliminated by the serial killer.
Henrik Vanger had previously had a private security company checked whether Blomkvist was trustworthy. This was done by a freelancer, the highly intelligent, but because of a complicated history (which is revealed in the two subsequent novels) under guardian Lisbeth Salander. She is a skilled hacker and compiles a report on Blomkvist after breaking into his computer. Blomkvist learns about Salander from Henrik Vanger's lawyer, and they join forces to hunt down the killer together.
Independently of each other, both Blomkvist and Salander find out that the serial killer is Harriet's brother Martin Vanger and that he has already murdered many women. Blomkvist falls into the power of the serial killer through carelessness and is freed again by Salander. The serial killer commits suicide while trying to escape. Blomkvist and Salander find out that Harriet was not murdered, but lives under a different name. She fled to Australia after being sexually abused by her father and brother.
Harriet returns to Sweden and will work in a managerial position for the Vanger Group. Henrik Vanger had promised Mikael Blomkvist that he would pass materials against Wennerström, but he can only provide him with worthless material. Lisbeth Salander, however, has collected innumerable evidence of Wennerström's dark machinations through hacking, which she is now making available to Blomkvist. Their publication in a special Millennium issue and in book form restores the reputation of both the magazine and Blomkvist. Wennerström, against whom criminal proceedings are opened, settles abroad, where he finds death. Before that, Salander managed to divert enormous amounts of money from Wennerströms accounts.
characters
- Mikael Blomkvist: main character, nicknamed "Kalle", co-owner of the Millennium newspaper, investigative journalist
“He is described as a second rate celebrity in Sweden whose status is enhanced by the public poll he is doing on Hans-Erik Wennerström. At the beginning of the novel, Mikael is jailed for being sued for defamation. Then he was offered a large sum of money from the former entrepreneur Henrik Vanger to uncover a 40-year-old secret. "
The living conditions of the character Mikael Blomquist are described in detail based on research by Lisbeth Salander:
“Mikael Blomkvist was born on January 18, 1960, so she is now forty-three years old. He was born in Borlänge , where he never lived. His parents, Kurt and Anita Blomkvist, were in their mid-thirties when they had children. They have both died in the meantime. His father was a mechanical engineer and traveled a lot. As far as I could learn, his mother was always only a housewife. The family moved to Stockholm when Mikael started school. He has a sister named Annika who is three years younger than him and is a lawyer. He also has a few uncles and cousins. "
- Lisbeth Salander: protagonist with an anti-social attitude, nickname Wasp, hacker with high intelligence, has a photographic memory, works as a freelance in the security industry. Lisbeth suffered traumatic experiences in her childhood.
Lisbeth Salander polarizes with her extravagant appearance, with which she often provokes her surroundings:
“Armansky found it hard to reconcile with the thought that his star investigator was a pale, anorectically skinny girl with stubble-short hair and piercings in her nose and eyebrows. There was a two-centimeter wasp tattooed on her neck, and another tattoo wound around the biceps of her left arm and one ankle. Once, when she was wearing a top, Armansky had also noticed that her shoulder blade was adorned with a larger tattoo in the shape of a dragon. She was actually red-haired, but she had dyed her hair jet black. She looked like she had just woken up after a week-long orgy with a hard rock gang. "
“From her early childhood on, Salander has been marked by violence and vindictiveness, and she also seems to suffer from a personality disorder that makes an ordinary social life impossible for her. When she was twelve, she poured gasoline on her father and set him on fire after he brutally beat her mother, causing irreparable brain damage. As a result of this incident, her father almost dies and barely survives and is heavily scarred. Lisbeth is declared 'a danger to herself and others' and is taken to St. Stefan's Child Psychiatry in Uppsala. She refuses to speak to the psychologists, police officers, teachers, and social workers. The only person she is willing to speak to is lawyer Holger Palmgren, who works as her trustee until she grows up. At fifteen it is decided that she is no longer a threat to herself or others and she is placed in an adoptive family. After she escapes from there, Palmgren explains that she would be sent back to the mental hospital if she kept running away. This convinces her to stay with the next family who takes her in. At eighteen she shows herself to be uncooperative and despises most figures of authority, and she often fights. After a particularly brutal argument with a man who attacks her, the forensic psychiatrists recommend her to admit her, but Palmgren takes on her defense and works hard to convince the court that she would not be sent to a psychiatric again. He agreed to take her in and take care of her instead. The relationship between Salander and Palmgren was to become one of the most important in Salander's life. "
- Hans-Erik Wennerström: corrupt Swedish entrepreneur and archenemy of Mikael Blomkvist
- Holger Palmgren: Lawyer, former supervisor and, to some extent, the father figure of Lisbeth Salander
- Nils Bjurman: corrupt lawyer and supervisor of Lisbeth Salander after Holger Palmgren
- Erika Berger: editor at Millennium, friend and occasionally lover of Blomkvist
- Dirch Frode: Attorney for Vanger Corporation, best friend and assistant to Henrik Vanger
- Dragan Armansky: Head of Milton Security, Salander's boss
- Christer Malm: Art Director and Designer at Millennium. Together with Berger and Blomkvist, he is also a co-owner of the paper
- Gustaf Morell: Retired Police Inspector (Chief Inspector during Harriet's disappearance)
- Agneta Sofia Salander: Lisbeth's mother
- Plague: Lisbeth Salander's hacker colleague
Vanger family
- Henrik Vanger: brother of Gottfried Vanger. Former CEO of Vanger Corporation. Now retired entrepreneur. Henrik Vanger hires Blomquist to investigate his missing niece, Harriet.
“Henrik Vanger is a retired entrepreneur who appears to be deluded. He is a widower who was married to a Jewish woman whom he helped flee Germany during World War II. He had three National Socialist brothers who despised him for this, two of his brothers are now dead. Henrik Vanger owns a large part of Hedeby Island and is the oldest member of the Vanger family. Vanger is 82 years old. He used to lead the Vanger Cooperation, but retired from his job after the disappearance of his niece Harriet Vanger. He hires Mikael Blomkvist to clarify Harriet's disappearance. "
- Harald Vanger: Henrik's brother and father of Cecilia, Anita, and Birger. Convinced National Socialist.
- Anita Vanger: Cecilia's sister and Harriet's confidante
- Cecilia Vanger: Harald Vanger's daughter and one of Henrik's nieces.
- Gottfried Vanger: father of Harriet and Martin Vanger. National Socialist, alcoholic, sadist and murderer of women. Drowned in a lake in 1966
- Isabella Vanger: wife of Gottfried Vanger.
- Harriet Vanger: Henrik's great niece, who fell victim to the machinations of Gottfried and Martin and disappeared 40 years ago.
- Martin Vanger: CEO of Vanger Corporation. Martin is urged to murder women by his father.
“For most of the story, it looks like he's a very hard working person who isn't called suspect for being on the other side of the bridge when Harriet went missing. Martin did not kill Harriet, but he did kill many other women. "
Victim
- Lena Andersson was murdered by Martin Vanger in Uppsala in 1966.
- Lea Persson was murdered by Gottfried Vanger in Uddevalla in 1964. Martin Vanger, who was 14 years old at the time, was there and watched his father raping and murdering Leah.
- Liv Gustavsson is murdered in Stockholm in the 1960s.
The murder of the five women is based on a basic religious motive:
Magda - 32016, Sara - 32109, RJ - 30112, RL - 32027, Mari - 32018
"[...] Harriet hadn't written down any phone numbers. The numbers indicated the chapter and verse in Leviticus, the Third Book of Moses. The criminal legislation.
(Magda) Third book of Moses, chapter 20, verse 16: If a woman approaches any animal to have company with him, you shall kill her and the animal too. They shall die of death, and their blood guilt be upon them .
(Sarah) Third book of Moses, chapter 21, verse 9: If a priest's daughter is profaned by fornication, she should be burned with fire, for she has profaned her father .
(RL) Third book of Moses, chapter 20, verse 27: If a man or a woman can conjure up spirits or interpret signs, she is to die of death; they should be stoned; their blood guilt come upon them .
(RJ) Third book of Moses, chapter 1, verse 12: And he cut it into pieces, and the priest shall put them with the head and the fat on the wood over the fire that is on the altar .
(Mari) Third book of Moses, chapter 20, verse 18: If a man lies with a woman in the time of her day and has company with her and thus uncovered the well of her blood and she uncovered the well of her blood, then both of her people should be be exterminated . "
Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy is counted among the modern thrillers that depict explicit violence. The worldview of the characters acting in the novel is greatly simplified and affirmative. Statistics on violence against women are given at the beginning of each chapter.
"18% of all Swedish women over fifteen have been threatened by a man."
"46% of all Swedish women over fifteen have been victims of male violence at some point."
"92% of all Swedish women who have been victims of sexual violence have not reported their recent experience to the police."
In Larsson's work, women are predominantly in the role of victims. Topics are latent aggression, sexually motivated power fantasies and sadism. The perpetrator-victim relationship is characterized by dominance and submission. The rape victims are tied up and naked and are humiliated by the perpetrator. Larsson mostly holds back on the details in these scenes.
Awards
In 2006 the novel won the Scandinavian Krimipreis Glasnyckeln , the English version the British Book Award for Crime Thriller .
Adaptations
filming
The novel was made into a film in 2009 with Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace in the leading roles under the title Verblendung . In 2011 the remake took place in Hollywood with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in the leading roles, see Verblendung (2011) .
radio play
The novel is available in German in a radio play version on sound carrier in a production of the WDR with Ulrich Matthes, Sylvester Groth and Anna Thalbach. This radio play was published in 2010 by the Cologne publisher Random House Audio.
Audio book
Verblendung was published in 2009 as an abridged reading on audio carriers. The title was read by Dietmar Bär . The translation was done from Swedish by Wibke Kuhn. Thomas Krüger and the publisher Schall & Wahn from Bergisch Gladbach were responsible for the reading version and direction. In 2012 an unabridged version was published by Audible , read by Dietmar Wunder .
Graphic novel
In 2013 DC / Vertigo published a graphic novel , drawn by Leonardo Manco and Andrea Mutti, in Germany the graphic novel is published by Panini Comic.
Parodies
- Verarschung (The Girl with the Sturgeon Tattoo, 2006) - Lars Arffssen
- The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo (2010) - Adam Roberts
- The Girl who Fixed the Umlaut (2012) - Nora Ephron
expenditure
- Delusion . Revised by Knut Krüger. Translated by Wibke Kuhn , Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-453-01181-6 .
- Delusion . Heyne-Taschenbuch, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-50384-7 .
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Content and discussion on dieterwunderlich.de
- Book review on Krimi-Couch.de
Notes and individual references
- ↑ "Verblendung" in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ "Verblendung" as a paperback in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ a b Information about the book on the official website of the book adaptation " Verblendung "
- ↑ German wasp
- ^ Millennium Wiki
- ↑ Stieg Larsson: Verblendung, Heyne-Taschenbuch, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-50384-7 , pp. 372–373
- ↑ Silent storytellers, Stieg Larsson: Verblendung, by Antje Hübler
- ↑ Stieg Larsson: Verblendung, Heyne-Taschenbuch, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-50384-7 , p. 11.
- ↑ Stieg Larsson: Verblendung, Heyne-Taschenbuch, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-50384-7 , p. 157.
- ↑ Stieg Larsson: Verblendung, Heyne-Taschenbuch, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-50384-7 , p. 525.
- ↑ Silent storytellers, Stieg Larsson: Verblendung, by Antje Hübler
- ↑ Radio play in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ "Verblendung" as an audio book in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Verblendung Graphic Novel - Review ( Memento of the original from October 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ www.krimi-couch.de Review Lars Arffssen - Verarschung
