Most Popular Books by Henning Mankell

The Man Who Smiled begins with Wallander deep in a personal and professional crisis after killing a man in the line of duty; eventually, he vows to quit the Ystad police force for good. Just then, however, a friend who had asked Wallander to look ...

An international bestseller: Murder becomes a high tech game of cat and mouse in this "thinking man''s thriller" from the master of Nordic noir ( The New York Times Book Review). Ystad, Sweden. A man stops at an ATM during his evening walk and inexplicably falls to the ground dead. Two teenage girls brutally murder a taxi driver. They are quickly apprehended, shocking local policemen with their complete lack of remorse. A few days later a blackout cuts power to a large swath of the country. When a serviceman arrives at the malfunctioning power substation, he makes a grisly discovery. Inspector Kurt Wallander senses these events must be linked, but he has to figure out how and why. The search for answers eventually leads him dangerously close to a group of anarchic terrorists who hide in the shadows of cyberspace. Somehow, these criminals always seem to know the police department''s next move. How can a small group of detectives unravel a plot designed to wreak havoc on a worldwide scale? And will they solve the riddle before it''s too late? A riveting police procedural about our increasing vulnerability in the modern digitized world, Firewall "proves once again that spending time with a glum police inspector in chilly Sweden can be quite thrilling . . . A notable success" ( Publishers Weekly).

Sweden''s most tenacious detective races to unlock the twisted logic behind a madman''s crimes: "Lyrical, meticulous, and stunningly suspenseful" ( St. Petersburg Times). On Midsummer''s Eve, three friends gather in a secluded meadow in Sweden. In the beautifully clear twilight, they don eighteenth-century costumes and begin a secret role-play. But an uninvited guest soon brings their performance to a gruesome conclusion. His approach is careful; his aim is perfect. Three bullets, three corpses. And his plans have only just begun to take shape. Meanwhile, Inspector Kurt Wallander is just back from vacation. Constantly fatigued, he soon learns his health is at risk—but there''s no time for rest when a fellow officer is murdered. Wallander soon discovers that the two grisly crimes are connected. A serial killer is on the loose, and the only lead is a photograph of a strange woman no one in Sweden seems to know. Forced to dig into the personal life of a trusted colleague, Wallander steps into a nightmare worse than any he could have imagined. Can he find his way out of the darkness before it''s too late? A pulse-pounding thriller and an incisive investigation into the mysteries of human nature, One Step Behind is "typical of the dense, intricate intelligence that Mankell brings to detection and crime writing" ( The Washington Post Book World).

The mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander • From the dean of Scandinavian noir, the fifth riveting installment in the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. In the award-winning Sidetracked, Kurt Wallander is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden’s former Minister of Justice has been axed to death and scalped. The murder has the obvious markings of a demented serial killer, and Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. But his investigation is beset with a handful of obstacles—a department distracted by the threat of impending cutbacks and the frivolity of World Cup soccer, a tenuous long-distance relationship with a murdered policeman’s widow, and the unshakably haunting preoccupation with the young girl who set herself on fire. Fascinating and astute, Sidetracked is a compelling mystery enhanced by keen social awareness.

The tenth riveting installment in the mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander • "As satisfying for its emotional depth as its suspense.... A gripping mystery.” —PEOPLE Magazine A retired navy officer has vanished in a forest near Stockholm. Kurt Wallander is prepared to stay out of the relatively straightforward investigation—which is, after all, another detective’s responsibility—but the missing man is his daughter’s father-in-law. With his typical disregard for rules and regulations, Wallander is soon pursuing his own brand of dogged detective work on someone else’s case. His methods are often questionable, but the results are not: he finds an extremely complex situation which may involve the secret police and ties back to Cold War espionage. Adding to Wallander’s concerns are more personal troubles. Having turned sixty, and having long neglected his health, he’s become convinced that his memory is failing. As he pursues this baffling case, he must come to grips not only with the facts at hand, but also with his own troubling situation.

Internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Henning Mankell will be published for the first time in Canada by Knopf Canada with Depths. October 1914: the destroyer Svea emerged from the Stockholm archipelago bearing south-southeast. On board was Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, a naval engineer charged with making depth soundings to find a navigable channel for the Swedish navy. As a child Tobiasson-Svartman was fascinated by measurement; nothing is as magical as exact knowledge. His instinct for his profession is reflected in the comfortable domesticity he enjoys with his wife – herself meticulous in every detail. Close to the waters where soundings are taken Tobiasson-Svartman alights on a barren skerry, presumed uninhabited, and is surprised to discover there a young woman, Sara Fredrika. Despite her almost feral appearance, something about her strikes him to the core. The mission is a success and the Svea returns to Gothenburg. Tobiasson-Svartman, however, remains haunted by this chance encounter; his equilibrium has been disturbed, and he is now compelled to find any pretence to return to the remote islet. In Depths Mankell confirms his status as a writer deserving acclaim beyond the crime genre. By delving deep into the male psyche, he has produced a novel as tense and compelling in every way as the Wallander series, but also powerful, moving and ultimately tragic.

An award-winning new novel by the internationally acclaimed mystery writer. "Nelio is dead. And however unlikely it may sound, it seemed to me that he died without once being afraid. How can that be possible?"-from Chronicler of the Winds World famous for his Kurt Wallander mysteries, Henning Mankell has been published in thirty-five countries, with more than 25 million copies of his books in print. In Chronicler of the Winds, he gives us something different: a beautifully crafted novel that is a testament to the power of storytelling itself. On the rooftop of a theater in an African port, a ten-year-old boy lies slowly dying of bullet wounds. He is Nelio, a leader of street kids, rumored to be a healer and a prophet, and possessed of a strangely ancient wisdom. One of the millions of poor people "forced to eat life raw," Nelio tells his unforgettable story over the course of nine nights. After bandits cruelly raze his village, he joins the legions of abandoned children living in the city''s streets. An act of the imagination, an effort to prove to his comrades that life must be more than mere survival, cuts short Nelio''s life. Already published in thirteen countries, Chronicler of the Winds was short-listed for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature and was nominated for the Swedish Publishers Association''s August Prize.

From the internationally acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries comes an extraordinary stand-alone novel - both a mystery and a sweeping drama - that traces the legacy of the nineteenth-century slave trade between China and America. January 2006. In the small Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, a horrific scene is discovered: nineteen people have been tortured and massacred an the only clue is a red silk ribbon found at the scene. Judge Birgitta Roslin has a particular reason to be shocked by the crime: her mother''s adoptive parents, the Andréns, are among the victims. Investigating further, she learns that an Andrén family living in Nevada has also been murdered. Travelling to Hesjövallen, she finds a diary, kept by a gangmaster on the railway built across America in the 1860s, full of vivid descriptions of the brutality with which the Chinese and other slave workers were treated. She discovers that the red silk ribbon found at the crime scene came from a local Chinese restaurant, and she learns that a Chinese man, a stranger to the town, was staying at a local boarding house at the time of the atrocity. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed such a horrific crime, but Birgitta suspects that there is much more to it, and she is determined to uncover the truth. Her search takes her from Sweden to Beijing and back, but Mankell''s narrative also takes us 150 years into the past: to China and America when the hatred that fuelled the massacre was born, a hatred transformed and complicated over time and that will catch up to Birgitta as she draws ever closer to discovering who is behind the Hesjövallen murders.

The mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander • From the dean of Scandinavian noir, the third riveting installment in the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. The execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife looks like a simple case even though there is no obvious suspect. But then Wallander learns of a determined stalker, and soon enough, the cops catch up with him. But when his alibi turns out to be airtight, they realize that what seemed a simple crime of passion is actually far more complex—and dangerous. The search for the truth behind the killing eventually uncovers an assassination plot, and Wallander soon finds himself in a tangle with both the secret police and a ruthless foreign agent. Combining compelling insights into the sinister side of modern life with a riveting tale of international intrigue, The White Lioness keeps you on the knife-edge of suspense.

Linda Wallander''s first job as a police officer is complicated by her father''s presence on the police force, until Linda''s childhood friend disappears, forcing the father and daughter to work together and find the missing girl before it is too late.

When a life raft carrying the bodies of two Eastern European criminals washes up on the Swedish coastline, Inspector Kurt Wallender travels to Riga, Latvia, where he struggles against corruption and deceit and risks his own life to uncover the truth.

From the bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander series comes a touching and intimate story about an embattled man’s unexpected chance at redemption. Many years ago a devastating mistake drove Fredrik Welin into a life as far as possible from his former position as a surgeon, where he mistakenly amputated the wrong arm of one of his patients. Now he lives in a frozen landscape. Each morning he dips his body into the freezing lake surrounding his home to remind himself he’s alive. However, Welins’s icy existence begins to thaw when he receives a visit from a guest who helps him embark on a journey to acceptance and understanding. Full of the graceful prose and deft characterization that have been the hallmarks of Mankell’s prose, Italian Shoes shows a modern master at the height of his powers, effortlessly delivering a remarkable novel about the most rewarding theme of all: hope.

Inspector Kurt Wallander, a local Swedish police officer whose own personal life is falling apart, finds himself coping with a wave of anti-foreigner sentiment when he is put in charge of the investigation into the brutal murders of an elderly couple.

Inspector Kurt Wallander searches for a ruthless killer as he uncovers the link between the murders of four nuns and another unidentified woman in an Algerian convent and the death of a birdwatcher found skewered in a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles.

From the dean of Scandinavian noir, come s a riveting mystery set in frozen north of Sweden. . When retired policeman Herbert Molin is found brutally slaughtered on his remote farm in the northern forests of Sweden, police find strange tracks in the snow — as if someone had been practicing the tango. Stefan Lindman, a young police officer recently diagnosed with mouth cancer, decides to investigate the murder of his former colleague, but is soon enmeshed in a mystifying case with no witnesses and no apparent motives. Terrified of the disease that could take his life, Lindman becomes more and more reckless as he unearths the chilling links between Molin’s death and an underground neo-Nazi network that runs further and deeper than he could ever have imagined.

The unforgettable story of Sofia, a courageous young woman struggling to take care of her poverty-stricken family in Mozambique. This is the third novel about Sofia, which began with a terrible landmine accident in Secrets in the Fire, and continued into her teenage years in Playing with Fire.

A volume of short works featuring the popular investigator features Wallander as a young patrolman on his first case, a new father facing unexpected danger on Christmas Eve, a middle-aged man solving a poisoning death, a separated husband investigating a photographer''s murder, and a veteran detective connecting a dual murder to a plane crash.

In the 1870s, Hans Bengler arrives in Cape Town from Sweden, driven by a singular desire: to discover an insect no one has seen before and name it after himself. But then he impulsively adopts a young San orphan, a boy he christens Daniel and brings with him back to Sweden--a quite different specimen than he first contemplated. Daniel is told to call Bengler "Father," taught to knock on doors and bow, and continually struggles to understand this strange new land of mud and snow that surrounds and seemingly entraps him. At the same time, he is haunted by visions of his murdered parents calling him home to Africa. Knowing that the only way home is by sea, he decides he must learn to walk on water if he is ever to reclaim his true place in the world.

Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what real...

This poignant novel explores how a unilateral decision can change a life. Two things are hard for Joel Gustafson to cope with: not knowing why, and not being able to do anything about it. Joel’s father was once a sailor who lived by the sea. Joel’s mother once lived with them. Joel’s father abandoned the sea. Joel’s mother abandoned Joel and his father. While looking out his window one night, Joel sees a lonely dog on the street. Joel spots the animal again and begins sneaking out night after night, trying to find it. During these nocturnal outings, Joel discovers aspects of life he has never imagined. And then one night he discovers that his father’s bed, too, is empty. As Joel investigates his father’s mysterious absences and continues to search for the dog, he discovers his own inner strength and learns about adult disappointments and needs.

Based on a real-life land mine victim, this middle reader novel tells a story of recovery, hope and coming of age of an African girl who loses her legs to a land mine.

Joel is fifteen and has left school, wanting to become a merchant sailor and travel far away from his home town in Northern Sweden. But first he must face up to the past and meet his mother who ran off when he was little. After such a long time how will Joel and his dad cope with such a reunion and will Joel ever sail the seas as he dreams. . . ?

From the New York Times–bestselling author: A story of one man’s awakening and “a heartfelt reminder of the many people whose struggles are never known” (The Plain Dealer). Jesper Humlin, a poet of middling acclaim and underwhelming book sales, is facing a crisis. His boy-wonder stockbroker has squandered Humlin’s investments, and his editor, who says he must write a crime novel to survive, starts pitching and promoting the nonexistent book despite Humlin’s emphatic refusals. Then, when he travels to Gothenburg to give a reading, he finds himself thrust into a world where names shift, stories overlap, and histories are both deeply secret and in profound need of retelling. Leyla from Iran, Tanya from Russia, and Tea-Bag, who is from Africa but claims to be from Kurdistan (because Kurds might receive preferential treatment as refugees)—these are the shadow girls who become Humlin’s unlikely pupils in impromptu writing workshops. Though he had imagined their stories as fodder for his own book, soon their intertwining lives require him to play a much different role. Offering both surprising humor and heartrending tragedy, The Shadow Girls is a “passionate and entertaining” triumph that will astonish longtime fans of Mankell’s acclaimed Kurt Wallander novels as well as readers new to his work (The Daily Telegraph).

Continues the story of Joel, now nearly twelve and living with his father in a small town in 1957 Sweden, as he is run over by a bus and survives without a scratch, then sets out to do a good deed in gratitude for this miracle.

A stunning and poignant autobiographical look at the myriad experiences that shape a meaningful life, by the bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries. “Surely one of the most moving and intriguing farewell notes ever written.... Intensely beautiful in its spirit.” —Alexander McCall Smith, New Statesman In January 2014, Henning Mankell received a diagnosis of lung cancer. Quicksand is a response to this shattering news—but it is not a memoir of destruction. Instead, it is a testament to a life fully lived, a tribute to the extraordinary but fleeting human journey that delivers both boundless opportunity and crucial responsibility. In a series of intimate vignettes, Mankell ranges over rich and varied reflections: of growing up in a small Swedish town, where he experiences a startling revelation on a winter morning as a young boy; of living hand-to-mouth during a summer in Paris as an ambitious young writer; of his work at a theater in Mozambique, where Lysistrata is staged in the midst of civil war; of chance encounters with men and women who changed his understanding of the world. Along the way, Mankell ponders the meaning of a good life, and the critically important ways we can shape the future of humanity if we are fortunate enough to have the choice. Vivid, clear-eyed, and breathtakingly beautiful, Quicksand is an invaluable parting gift from a great man.

Henning Mankell''s first novel, never before released in English, explores the reflections of a working class man who has struggled against the constraints of his station for his entire life. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL. The year is 1911. The young rock blaster Oskar Johansson has been killed in an accident. Or so it says in the local newspaper. In spite of serious injuries, however, Oskar survives. Decades later, Oskar looks back and reflects on his working life as an invalid, his marriage, his dreams, and his hopes. Oskar''s life is woven together out of fragments of voices, images, and episodes that, taken together, provide a sharp and precise picture of life in Sweden for the working class.

From the internationally acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander crime novels, a powerful stand-alone novel set in early-twentieth-century Sweden and Mozambique, whose vividly drawn female protagonist is awoken from her naïveté by her exposure to racism and by her own unexpected inner strengths. Cold and poverty define Hanna Renström’s childhood in remote northern Sweden, and in 1904, at nineteen, she boards a ship for Australia in hope of a better life. But none of her hopes—or fears—prepares her for the life she will lead. After two brief marriages both leave her widowed, she finds herself the owner of a bordello in Portuguese East Africa, a world where colonialism and white colonists rule, where she is isolated within white society by her profession and her gender, and, among the bordello’s black prostitutes, by her color. As Hanna’s story unfurls over the next several years in this “treacherous paradise,” she wrestles with a devastating loneliness and with the racism she’s meant to unthinkingly adopt. And as her life becomes increasingly intertwined with the prostitutes’, she moves inexorably toward the moment when she will make a decision that defies all the expectations society has of her and, more important, those she has of herself. Gripping in its drama, evocative and searing in its portrait of colonial Africa, A Treacherous Paradise is, at its heart, a deeply moving story of a woman who manages to wrench wisdom, empathy, and grace from the most unforgiving circumstances.

As it has in the past, the first snow of the year signifies to Joel Gustafson his very own New Year''s Eve. So when the snow begins to fall on a cold November day, Joel gets busy making resolutions--three to be exact. Resolution #1: Live to be at least a hundred. He realizes that this will require toughening himself up by testing his physical limits. Resolution #2: Set his eyes on the sea for the first time. To do this, Joel knows he needs to help sort out his father Samuel''s problems and get him back to the life he left behind--being a sailor at sea. Resolution #3: See a naked lady. At almost fourteen, Joel feels he needs to see the world--including females--in an entirely different light. As the winter days pass, life becomes ever more complicated, but Joel is determined to keep his resolutions--for his father, for himself, and for their future. When the Snow Fell follows Joel''s journey as he realizes along the way that it will require determination, strength, and valor in order to truly become a young man.

The invaluable Memory Book Project gives those dying of AIDS in Africa an opportunity to record their lives in words and pictures for the children they leave behind. Excerpts from Ugandan memory books, along with Mankell''s narrative, tell stories of individual lives while sounding a powerful warning about the threat of AIDS.

Lukas adores his kitten, named Night. So when Night disappears Lukas is devastated and spends days searching for his pet. Eventually, with the help of friends and family, he begins to learn that sometimes we have to let go of the ones we love. Suggested level: primary, intermediate.

Interweaving past and present, Sweden and Zambia, rich and poor, The Eye of the Leopard is a stunning novel from a modern master. Hans Olofson arrives in Zambia not long after independence, hoping to fulfill the missionary dream of his recently deceased friend Janice. Africa is a complete shock to Olofson, yet he chooses to stay and make it his home, eventually taking control of a small farm. Here, he learns of the fragile truce between the white and black populations of Zambia, and rumors of an underground army of revolutionaries wearing leopard skins alert him that violence may erupt at any moment. As a wealthy white man, he grows increasingly fearful and returns in his mind to the traumatic events that drove him from Sweden, playing back the complicated events of his past, as his present races toward a thrilling climax.

A brave, moving and unflinchingly honest YA novel about a young girl''s life in Mozambique, where poverty, exploitation, HIV/AIDS and the legacy of war are constant problems. This book continues the story of Sofia, from Secrets in the Fire, who lost her legs after a landmine accident.