The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About This Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group's discussion of Stieg Larsson's extraordinary thriller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

About This Book
This spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue was a sensation across Europe, with millions of copies sold.

It's about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden...and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.

It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance...and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age - and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it - who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism - and an unexpected connection between themselves.

Reader's Guide

1. Who do you consider the novel's protagonist, Lisbeth or Mikael? Why?
   


2. What point was Larsson trying to make with the themes running through this novel? How do issues such as man's brutality to women, journalistic integrity, and more general notions of trust tie in with each other throughout the book?
   


3. What function do the sex-crime statistics on each section's title page serve?
   
   
   4. Re-read the passage from Mikael's book on page 84. What is its significance, in terms of the plot?
   

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.