I enjoy reading Henning Mankell too - currently deeply engrossed in Firewall (Wallander number 8). I've read one of the African ones - Eye of the Leopard? - it certainly wasn't a cheerful read, but very thought provoking.

Alison

I enjoy reading Henning Mankell too - currently deeply engrossed in Firewall (Wallander number 8). I've read one of the African ones - Eye of the Leopard? - it certainly wasn't a cheerful read, but very thought provoking.

Alison

Great to hear from a fellow-fan!

I didn't know if there'd be any!

After "Firewall" (which I haven't yet read), his final Wallender is "The Troubled Man" - and he swears there will not be another Wallender book. Except ... he then went back in time and wrote about Wallender's young days, a recent book, "The Pyramid". I have that waiting.

He also wrote a book about Wallender's daughter, Linda, "Before The Frost" (2005 in translation), so I'm going to read that too.

Just to briefly get back to the subject, he seriously suggests in "Kennedy's Brain" that in Africa poor people are being 'taken', injected with HIV, and experimented on, cut apart while alive by companies, as the cure for AIDS would bring in enormous money. He writes that he has personal knowledge of this. That life there comes cheap. Seriously disturbing. Is he right, or is it an over-active imagination? He seems to know his stuff. I might do some research into this one day ... though in his novel, everyone who did ends up dead. 😮 Oh well. Mankell hasn't anyway.

V

"Depths"

A bit more on Mankell, as I'm currently reading his stand-alone novel, "Depths". The title is allegory, as the protagonist is on a mission to sound out the depths of the shallow water in the Baltic as WWI begins, for military reasons: but it's clearly a book about the depths of human nature. I've never read anything like it. It's very sparse. Sometimes I wonder if I should be bored by it. But critics seem to love it.

I wouldn't even have guessed that Mankell wrote it, it is so very different to the Wallender books.

I can't describe how sparse it is. No-one so far whom you can like, the protagonist is unlikeable, and it takes place in a setting I've never dreamed of before or been to. Off the Swedish coast there are "skerries", it seems. These are just outcroppings of rock above the water-level, only a few hundred yards long. But many miles from the coast. Yet people sometimes actually live on them, though nothing really grows there. They fish. Or at least the odd person lived there 100 or more years ago.

It's about a man in an unhappy marriage who comes across a young woman stuck (unable to get off) a skerry. How she plays on his mind when he leaves, so he returns. I'm really not sure (half-way through) what to think of this book. It's again hardly a happy read (whereas I really love the Wallender character). There's obviously a message here about the nature of some men, but it is so, so stark. Makes me wonder what prompts anyone to write such a book.

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I suppose in the end I'll have to take the leap, and read his one book of non-fiction, as he does interest me. It sounds autobiographical: "I Die, But The Memory Lives On".

V

A bit more on Mankell, as I'm currently reading his stand-alone novel, "Depths". The title is allegory, as the protagonist is on a mission to sound out the depths of the shallow water in the Baltic as WWI begins, for military reasons: but it's clearly a book about the depths of human nature. I've never read anything like it. It's very sparse. Sometimes I wonder if I should be bored by it. But critics seem to love it....

Hello Venetian,

You are not alone in reading Mankell - I have read this one too - and agree with your comments. I too felt pulled to the edge of boredom, but kept reading. It's very flat and very stark, which is all that I can really remember. It's the sort of book that you hesitate to recommend to an occasional reader in case you put them off reading for life!

I'll have a look out for 'Kennedy's Brain' - but having found 'The Eye of the Leopard' quite unsettling, I'll have to choose a moment when I'm happy not to have a comfortable read. 'The Eye of the Leopard' takes an extremely naive Swede into the heart of Africa and exposes him to everyday corruption and we follow him as he tries to learn to survive in this culture. He leaves Africa a changed man - not disillusioned because he was never an idealist, but able to make decisions about what he is not willing to live with. It's more an extended vignette than an involved novel.

Alison

Alison, hi,

'The Eye of the Leopard' takes an extremely naive Swede into the heart of Africa and exposes him to everyday corruption and we follow him as he tries to learn to survive in this culture. He leaves Africa a changed man - not disillusioned because he was never an idealist, but able to make decisions about what he is not willing to live with.

He does the same in "Kennedy's Brain", but amazingly - so far as I can judge as a man - does it well from a female viewpoint.

I am not going to leave that possibly-RL topic alone. One day I am going to have to research if it is really going on.

I don't agree with strong socialism BTW, but like to keep an open mind. So I enjoy his PoV. It nicely challenges me. Mankell the man is clearly writing about himself in Africa and about his own naivety, not realising how corrupt almost every regime there is. I assume that Wallender is no socialist but a depicture of almost the opposite. (All the immigration into Sweden and the break-down of civilisation which clearly concerns Mankell too.) I chiefly know Denmark, having had a g/f there, so I visited often, and it's the same culture: people trying to make socialism and "getting along" really work, and to an extent it very much does: but there are times when everything goes wrong.

"Depths" I am still struggling with. It is so unlike the Wallender books. I guess you have to decide if you want to face what may be the human nature of some people in this world, or just pass it by.

V

Henning Mankell was also on board one of the ships in the relief convoy that was bound for Gaza last year. [url]Here's a link.[/url]
Edit to say I really didn't like the English TV version of Wallander with Kenneth Branagh. The Swedish series was much superior IMHO.

I thought the Swedish version was rubbish, but there ya go!

V

I thought the Swedish version was rubbish, but there ya go!

V

Got to be honest. I can sometimes be a pleb who doesn't like sub-titles..... :rolleyes:

Well. I'm normally a quick reader but read his "Depths", finishing a few days back. It took me so long to get through. Talk about depressing! It's one of the most depressing things I've read in years, though obviously full of allegory. (It's not a Wallender novel.) I'd kind of like to sit down with him and ask him why he wrote it; a novel containing no uplift at all. He must have had his reasons - something he had to get out of his system. But I'd only recommend it to the strong-minded.

I suppose to his credit, the mark of an extremely able writer, without his name on the cover you would never dream that it's by him: a huge departure from his usual style and subject-matter.

V

Henning Mankell was also on board one of the ships in the relief convoy that was bound for Gaza last year. [url]Here's a link.[/url]
Edit to say I really didn't like the English TV version of Wallander with Kenneth Branagh. The Swedish series was much superior IMHO.

I "knew nothing" when I first replied to this, Sunanda. I'm now a real convert, and so agree. The Branagh series was in English, which no doubt was the whole point as it reached a wider market. It was certainly not bad at all, but I hadn't really concentrated on the Swedish versions. Of which there are two. It all gets slightly confusing! But not really. I see from Wikipedia that Swedish TV (though some episodes were released into cinema or direct to DVD?) did 26 episodes of Wallender with the same main actor over many years beginning in 1994. I'm not sure they've ever been seen here? Mankell agreed to it and suggested plots, since most stories were not from the novels.

But the nine novels have ALSO been done in Sweden, released in a variety of ways, with Rolf Lassgård in the lead role. Very unfortunately, only 3-4 of them have been on BBC4, and one, as I write, is on i-player. I must now say, this series from Sweden, yes, wins me over. It's Wallender just as you think of him from the books.

I finished the very final Wallender novel, "The Troubled Man" some weeks ago BTW. It's realistic in the sense that it's how age often does, in real life, hit some people; but in typical Mankell style I found that very disturbing. As I recall Wallender's about 60-65 by then and ... Alzheimers or its ilk is manifesting. Not exactly Indiana Jones, is it? But the realism is what captivates us about the mankell novels, I think.

On i-player at this time:

V