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In the 1870s, Hans Bengler arrives in Cape Town from Småland, 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.
Evocative and sometimes brutal, the novel takes Daniel through a series of tragedies and betrayals that culminate in a shocking act. Mankell tells this indelible story with a ruthless elegance all his own.
"Earnest and heartbreaking ... Mankell fully understands Daniel's radically different cultural perspective and indelibly captures the boy's longing to return to his homeland." - Publishers Weekly
"Glum by even Scandinavian standards, Mankell's narrative radiates a haunting intensity despite measured pacing. The dearth of suspense likely will disappoint Wallander fans; this is strictly for readers unafraid of bleak literary fiction" - Library Journal
"Starred Review. An ambitious, flawed but compelling addition to the Mankell canon." - Kirkus
This information about Daniel was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Author Henning Mankell was the acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries plus more than 20 other novels, both series and stand-alones. The Kurt Wallander series has been published in thirty-three countries and consistently tops the bestseller lists in Europe, receiving major literary prizes (including the UK's Golden Dagger Award in 2000) and generating numerous international film and television adaptations.
Born in a village in northern Sweden in 1948, Mankell divided his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique until his death in October 2015 from cancer.
Kurt Wallander Series Order (dates are English-language publication dates):
The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.
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