I was hooked by his unique story-telling style instantly and permanently. I have been a fan of his ever since I stumbled upon The Return of the Dancing Master about ten years ago. This was not the first book I have read by this first rate author, best known for his Inspector Kurt Wallander crime fiction series. The Eye of the Leopard, Mankell’s book set in his native Sweden and his beloved Africa, where he apparently spent part of his life. He showed me the landscape of Africa, more specifically that of Zambia, her people, her culture and customs, corruption and war, problems that were scorching her soul and tearing her apart. Swedish Writer, Henning Mankell took me on a journey to discover that amazing continent, like no other. A powerful exploration of the stresses and challenges of freedom.Yet somehow I feel like as if I have been. “Beautiful, heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful . . . “Mankell’s novels are the best Swedish export since flatpack furniture.” - The Guardian

“Mankell is a master of atmosphere and suspense.” - Los Angeles Times “A thought-provoking, multilayered novel whose themes will challenge and linger.” - The Courier Mail “A fascinating novel . . . prose is powerful, and the narrative of The Eye of the Leopard is profound.”. “Mankell’s novels are a joy.” - USA Today Rumors of an underground army of revolutionaries wearing leopard skins warn him that the fragile truce between blacks and whites is in danger of rupturing.Īlternating between Hans’s years in Africa and those of his youth in Sweden, The Eye of the Leopard is a bravura achievement and a study in contrasts-black and white, poor and wealthy, Africa and Europe-both sinister and elegiac. In all his years as a mzungu, a wealthy white man among native blacks, he never comes to fully understand his adoptive home, or his precarious place in it.

Africa is a terrible shock, yet he stays and makes it his home. But he is also there to flee the traumas of his motherless childhood in provincial Sweden: his father’s alcoholism, his best friend’s terrible accident, his fear of an ordinary and stifled fate.

There, he hopes to fulfill the missionary dream of a boyhood friend who was unable to make the journey. Hans Olofson arrives in Zambia in the 1970s, at the start of its independence. Interweaving past and present, The Eye of the Leopard draws on bestselling author Henning Mankell’s deep understanding of both Scandinavia and post-colonial Africa. From the creator of the acclaimed Kurt Wallander series: A thrilling story set in Sweden and Zambia told with “heart-stopping tension” ( Entertainment Weekly).

Henning mankell the eye of the leopard