Henning Mankell RIP and much love

[blake 3:17]

One of the great writers of the Left died this week.

My hero: Henning Mankell by Ian Rankin

Henning Mankell, who died earlier this week at the age of 67, was a complex figure whose extraordinary life was matched by his body of writing. He was just out of his teens when he started work in a theatre in Stockholm, eventually travelling through Africa and landing the role of artistic director at the Teatro Avenida in Maputo. In all, he would pen more than 40 plays, though these remain little-known outside Mozambique and Sweden. Most of us know Mankell for the series of novels he wrote featuring the detective Kurt Wallander. Like Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall’s before him, Mankell used the crime genre as a means of critiquing politics, big business, social unrest and corruption.

The first Wallander novel, Faceless Killers, took on the issues of immigration and racial tension. Published in Swedish in 1991, it had to wait until 1997 for an English translation, but success came soon after, when Sidetracked, which addressed child prostitution, won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger in 2001. Always politically active, Mankell was deported after taking part in an attempt to breach the Israeli embargo of the Gaza Strip. He also set up a publishing house to help Swedish and African writers, and gave huge amounts to charity, while of an evening he might sit down to watch a film with his father-in-law, Ingmar Bergman – something I quizzed him on during our session at the Edinburgh book festival in 2002.

In a Guardian interview in 2013, Mankell said: “I learn more about the human condition by living with one foot in the snow and one foot in the sand”, a reference to his peripatetic life. He showed us the human condition, warts and all, as seen through the eyes of an engagingly flawed but deeply humane central character, and paved the way for every Scandinavian detective who came after him.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...ell-ian-rankin

[blake 3:17]

Henning Mankell wanted to destroy the monster of Israeli apartheid

Henning Mankell, the creator of the Swedish detective Wallander and activist for Palestinian and African rights, has died at home aged 67. He had been diagnosed with cancer in early 2014.

Many fans of crime fiction will remember Mankell best for his Wallander novels — dark Scandinavian crime stories featuring a cynical, aging detective. Yet his stand for Palestinian rights will also be an important part of his legacy.

With an unconventional and sometimes chaotic upbringing, Mankell’s political spirit showed early. Having become a merchant seaman at 16, he was in Paris for the 1968 left-wing uprisings which are a legend of European radical politics.

He was involved in leftist activism in Norway in the 1970s, and during the 1980s worked in revolutionary Mozambique – a country to which he returned regularly throughout the rest of his life.

And his passion for justice showed in his novels, which highlighted themes such as racism and poverty.

In 2010, however, Mankell’s commitment to humanitarian values took center stage when he joined the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was attacked by Israeli troops, killing nine Turkish activists.

Mankell himself was not on the boat which was most fiercely assaulted by Israeli commandos, but he was seized by Israeli troops and deported back to Sweden.

Given his global stature, his comments and opinions were widely reported, including by the Israeli press.

Piracy
He criticized fellow writers and intellectuals, saying that: “You have to act, not just by writing, but by standing up and doing. For me, you cannot call yourself an intellectual if all you use your intellectual gifts for is to find excuses not to do anything. Which, sadly, is what I think a lot of intellectuals do.”

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs...aeli-apartheid