Larsson was known in his native Sweden as an investigative journalist and a fervent campaigner against racism. But when he died of a heart attack at age 50 in 2004, he left behind the manuscripts of three books that would transform his legacy. His first novel, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, was published in Sweden a year after his death and was already an international success when it was released in the United States last year by Alfred A Knopf. More than 6 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide. An international study based on best-seller lists in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain and China ranked Larsson the second most popular fiction writer in 2008 after Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.