Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist and author born in 1954 who spent much of his career as an investigative reporter and anti-fascism activist. He is best known for his posthumously published Millennium crime thriller trilogy, which features the hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist and became a global bestseller. Larsson died in November 2004 at the age of 50, just months before the first book in the series was released.