I decided to read it after reading Mankell's Before the Frost, but this was a complete let down. It started off well but then just seemed to lose track. He was going back and forth between present and past, which sometimes is interesting, but not in this case. I found the shifts between past and ...
On sent l'auteur engagé politiquement, mais les pages et pages de réflexion sur la politique de Mao et les introspections de l'héroïne se traînent et ralentissent le rythme. Dommage. J'aurais également aimé en savoir plus sur le crime qui ouvre le livre et les inspecteurs qui s'en occupent ; on n...
This is a political science book masquerading as a book of fiction. It goes on far longer than it should have, as well as includes far too many details, of which the author openly admits have no point. What about the red ribbon? Why are the characters so insipid? I gave up and kept pray for it to...
This is the first Wallander book that I didn't like. I finished it but I didn't really enjoy it. what's the point of going back in time and writing about his relationship to Mona when all they do is fight like we're already used to reading about when Wallander thinks back to their time together??...
Wallander as young policeman, in love and unsure of himself, leads off this collection of four short stories and one novelette. We learn to know Rydberg and we learn about Wallander's relationship with Mona. His habit of knowing something he can't quite see clearly was established in the beginn...
This is my second non-Wallendar novel by Mankell and I enjoyed it reasonably well. Despite the book blurb's suggestions about the depth of themes covered, I never really found myself convinced by the pretty appalling main character. And certainly not by his relationships. And I just got irritated...
"He searched for a Berlin Wall inside himself but found nothing." Quite a lot of introspection in this novel. Also liked the symbolism of the Kiowa tradition of carrying a weighty stone (representing a problem to be thought through) until there was resolution. And more political commentary from M...
I became so bewitched while reading Henning Mankell's novel "A Treacherous Paradise" I took my time as I neared the end, because I hoped the resolution would be a happy one. Based on a real person, the fictional protagonist Hanna Renstrom is a perpetually lost soul in a world full of rejection, p...
I thought that Henning Mankell only wrote mysteries, but I was wrong. This is the story of Hannah, a young Swedish woman who works briefly as a cook on a ship. She meets a man, falls in love, marries, and he dies. She jumps ship in the colony of Portuguese East Africa (this is 1904), and begin...
Being a fan of this author's detective series, I find it interesting to read his other novels which bring together the mystique and culture of African life, where Mankell now lives. Like "The Eye of the Leopard", his main characters come from Sweden and for various reasons land in Africa where he...
The story of Hanna Renstrom is a poignant adventure into the unknown.A A fictional account about a young woman rags to riches named Hannah. She is a fictional character in history that if a real person, people would be in awe of, or think she's a liar. I truly enjoyed this story. I read some revi...
I thought Mankell had finished the Wallender series; apparently he thought so, too, but he had some leftover writing so published one small book that took place before the final story. With this one he supplemented the book with an essay of his series, why he wrote it, and why he finished it. It ...
This is basically a novella written by the author many years ago as an incentive to be given to readers who purchased a crime book. This story features Kurt Wallander, and his stumbling onto a crime scene when he is looking for a house to buy after his retirement. Two bodies were found on the p...
The end of the Wallander mysteries yet ,chronologically, it takes place in 2002 and Kurt is feeling old and tired. Thirty years on the force and he is still on Mariagatan, still hoping for a house in the country and the big dog. Martinson has a family property that is for sale and thinks Kurt w...
I love the Wallander series. I'm one of those people that really enjoyed going to Ystad to see where the novels actually take place (my daughter, who was living in Malmo, took me on a day trip). This book is more of a novella, and, although just released in English, was written somewhere in the...
This was little more than a novella. I bought it as a novel. Wallender in his phlegmatic manner looks into finding a skeleton found in the yard of a house he is thinking about buying. The book is written in a rather disinterested manner but finally the owners of the house are tracked down and ...
As anyone who knows me will be aware I am a huge Henning Mankell fan and I am pretty sure that this was the last book of his that I hadn't read. This is not a Kurt Wallander story but a standalone dramatic novel with a heavy emphasis on aging, death,grief and taking responsibility (or not) for o...
Frederik leeft als gepensioneerd chirurg een kluizenaarsbestaan op een eiland langs de Zweedse kust. Tijdens een ijskoude winter waarin de zee dichtvriest en hij zijn dagen doorbrengt met ijsberen en opschrijven in zijn logboek hoeveel vogels er in de boom voor zijn raam zitten, duikt er opeens i...
Black comedy of the depressed? The hero is a once practicing surgeon into his twelfth year on the family island with only his old dog and cat for company, and the daily delivery of the postman for human contact. He is self-penitent because of a professional "catastrophe" and self-flagellates wi...
For the life of me, I don’t understand all the rave reviews this book has received. It only took me two days to read, and after a slew of verbose, florid and over used adjective laden novels, I was initially drawn in by the author’s sparse writing style, but, that wasn’t enough to make the novel....
Really a good read. Mankell has been recommended to me very strongly and I finally broke down (because I finally found a Swedish online bookstore I could afford). This is a very well constructed novel, with a well-thought out plot, interesting characters, and story that keeps you involved.This i...
Henning Mankell is such a gifted writer that his genius shines through even in translations of his work from Swedish. I've followed all his Kurt Wallander series novels for years and was anxious to read the final book, The Troubled Man. The morose detective still found no joy in his life. That...
Kurt Wallander - He works tirelessly, eats badly and drinks the nights away in a lonely, neglected flat. Still, he tackles some pretty incredible cases -- Here are the titles in the series (with a few extras) -Faceless KillersDogs Of RigaWhite LionessThe Man Who SmiledSidetrackedThe Fifth WomanOn...
One of the latest entries in the Kurt Wallender series, Before the Frost features his 30 year old daughter Linda as the 3rd person narrator of the story.[return][return]The Prologue, however, takes place at the mass suicide/massacre of the followers of the Revered Jim Jones at Jamestown in 1976, ...
Book ReviewFaceless Killers, a 1991 novel and the first in the Kurt Wallander series, delves right into Mankell's favorite pet peeve: the changing political and social landscape of Sweden and in particular the influx of immigration and asylum seekers allowed into Sweden seemingly without barriers...
Une fois de plus, Henning Mankell nous transporte dans un univers inquiétant, sur les traces du commissaire Wallander. Dans Les chiens de Riga, nous découvrons cette fois un environnement bien différent de sa Suède natale : les Etats baltes et plus particulièrement la Lettonie et sa capitale, Rig...
Book ReviewWe all get sidetracked, it's a human condition and a decidedly reactive one. The looming question, of course, is: sidetracked from what? Mankell asks this question in this, his 5th in the Wallander series. The subject is Kurt Wallander. Kurt's goal is to capture a heineous serial k...
In the prologue of Henning Mankell’s The Return of the Dancing Master, I thought I recognized a character from a recent TV movie called The Last Hangman, featuring the life and times of Albert Pierrepoint. (actor:Timothy Spall) I was wrong about the novel character’s exact identity; Mankell’s han...
Firewall: Any of a number of security schemes that prevent unauthorized users from gaining access to a computer network or that monitor transfers of information. What an appropriate title for this book, in more ways than one. First of all, the main area of investigation centers on trying to br...
There's something to be said for knowing the answer to a mystery while you're reading a mystery. I watched the first season of Wallander, of which One Step Behind was the last episode, before ever cracking a Wallander book, yet it didn't hurt my experience reading the book. Henning Mankell did th...
This short novel by Swedish writer Henning Mankell is the first of several books about Joel, a 12 year old growing up in a remote part of Northern Sweden with his father. It is followed by a second book, The Twilight of the Stars and most recently, The Boy Who Slept in the Snow (also known as Whe...
Book ReviewThe White Lioness, the third in the Kurt Wallander series is perhaps intended as Mankell's most ambitious Wallander novel to date. I say "intended" because on some levels it doesn't succeed as such. I'm a big fan of Wallander: his idiosyncrasies, his anti-authority attitude, his lone...
Η ιστορία ξεκινάει με πολλές υποσχέσεις. Διαβάζοντας δε και το βιογραφικό του συγγραφέα ο οποίος φαίνεται ότι ασχολείται με θέματα ευαίσθητα, προϊδεάζεσαι θετικά για μια ευχάριστη όσο και ενδιαφέρουσα ανάγνωση.Πρωτοσυναντούμε τη Σουηδή αρχαιολόγο Λουίζ Κάντορ στην Πελοπόννησο. Τη βρίσκουμε να ρεμ...
THE PYRAMID is a collection of 5 short mysteries by which Henning Mankell introduces us to Kurt Wallender when he is a 21 year-old patrolman investigating the first homicide of his career. In a foreward, Mankell explains that he has received many inquires over the years about what happened to Wal...
This book... how can I begin to describe it? I started reading it, by chance, a week away from my high school graduation. Quickly, I read the first two parts. I loved every character, each seen through the eyes of Joel. Gertrude, Simon, Samuel, Sara... They were all dear to me, and in my heart I ...
It took Daniel a long time to understand the word "home". And then he realized that whatever it was, it was far away from where he had been taken to. Hans Bengler, Swedish eccentric and somewhat hapless entomologist, had "adopted" the seven or eight year old San boy, Molo, during his expedition t...
Reviewed by Christina Tsichlis for TeensReadToo.comSHADOWS IN THE TWILIGHT by Henning Mankell is written using the distinctive voice of the main character, Joel. This is a companion book to A BRIDGE TO THE STARS. This is a story that asks philosophical questions and does it in a way everyone can ...
I really like Henning Mankell's books, but until now I've only read his crime books about Kurt Wallander, the swedish superintendent at Ystad police force.'When the snow fell' was at my local library's ' young adult section'. However, I wasn't disappointed. It's a beautifully written, a heartwar...
Book ReviewThe second review of two crime novels whose titles hint at laughter and joy, Mankell's novel The Man Who Smiled is in my opinion the best to date in the Wallander series. In the first review, we discovered the significance of how morose Martin Beck finally came to emit a burst of laugh...
One of the things I've heard a lot about in the past few years is postcolonialism. There's also a lot of talk about postmodernism and postmodernity, but I'm told that that is not really relevant to Africa and that postcolonialism is the thing. And apparently the book to read about postcolonialism...