The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (original title in Swedish: Män som hatar kvinnor, "Men Who Hate Women") is a crime novel by the Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson (1954-2004) which, when published posthumously in 2005, became a best-seller in Europe and the United States. It is the first book of the Millennium series.

Background

Larsson spoke of an incident which he said occurred when he was 15: he stood by as three men gang-raped an acquaintance of his named Lisbeth. Days later, racked with guilt for having done nothing to help her, he begged her forgiveness — which she refused. The incident, he said, haunted him for years afterward, and in part inspired him to create a character named Lisbeth who was also a rape survivor. The veracity of this story has been questioned since Larsson's death, after a colleague from Expo magazine reported to Rolling Stone that Larsson had told him that he had heard the story secondhand and retold it as his own. Also the murder of Catrine da Costa was an inspiration when he wrote the book.

Tattoo

A tattoo is a form of body modification, made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment.

Etymology

The word tattoo, or tattow in the 18th century, is a loanword from the Polynesian word tatau, meaning "correct, workmanlike". The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymology of tattoo as "In 18th c. tattaow, tattow. From Polynesian (Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan, etc.) tatau. In Marquesan, tatu." Before the importation of the Polynesian word, the practice of tattooing had been described in the West as painting, scarring, or staining.

This is not to be confused with the origins of the word for the military drumbeat — see military tattoo. In this case, the English word tattoo is derived from the Dutch word taptoe (OED).

The first written reference to the word tattoo (or tatau), appears in the journal of Joseph Banks (24 February 1743 – 19 June 1820), the naturalist aboard Captain Cook's ship the HMS Endeavour: "I shall now mention the way they mark themselves indelibly, each of them is so marked by their humor or disposition".

Dragon

A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that features in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan (namely the Japanese dragon), Korea and other East Asian countries.

The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries. The English word dragon derives from Greek δράκων (drákōn), "dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake".

Name

The word dragon entered the English language in the early 13th century from Old French dragon, which in turn comes from Latin draconem (nominative draco) meaning "huge serpent, dragon", from the Greek word δράκων, drakon (genitive drakontos, δράκοντος) "serpent, giant seafish". The Greek and Latin term referred to any great serpent, not necessarily mythological, and this usage was also current in English up to the 18th century.

Girl (disambiguation)

A girl is a young female human.

Girl or The Girl may also refer to:

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Daniel Craig

Daniel Wroughton Craig (born 2 March 1968) is an English actor. Craig trained at the National Youth Theatre and graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1991, before beginning his career on stage. His film debut was in the drama The Power of One (1992). Other early appearances were in the Disney family film A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995) and the biographical film Elizabeth (1998), as well as in the historical war drama television series Sharpe's Eagle (1993) and the action-adventure drama series Zorro. Cast as the fictional British secret agent James Bond in October 2005, his first film in the role, Casino Royale, was released internationally in November 2006.

Craig's appearances in the British television film Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), the indie war film The Trench (1999), and the drama Some Voices (2000) attracted the film industry's attention. This led to roles in bigger productions such as the action film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), the crime thriller Road to Perdition (2002), the crime thriller Layer Cake (2004), and the Steven Spielberg historical drama Munich (2005). Craig achieved international fame when chosen as the sixth actor to play the role of Ian Fleming's James Bond in the official film series, taking over from Pierce Brosnan in 2005. Although his casting was initially greeted with scepticism, his debut was highly acclaimed and earned him a BAFTA award nomination, with Casino Royale becoming the highest-grossing in the series at the time. Quantum of Solace followed two years later.