A Man of Character

I met Henning Mankell two years ago at an author's dinner. I had heard him speak the previous day in a talk entitled, A Man of Character.  I sat, enthralled, as he shared his experiences in Mozambique as the director of a community theatre and his involvement with various humanitarian causes. This is why I want to write, I thought. He spoke about greed which, he reflected, seemed to have become a virtue, about poverty - an unnatural state forced on people, and illiteracy - he thought we should be ashamed that we hadn't dealt with this problem yet.

Mankell spent half the year in Sweden and the other in Mozambique since the 1980s. He joked that he lived with one foot in the snow and the other in the sand. "Africa has taught me to be a better European," he said.

He was well-known for his crime fiction books which sold millions of copies and were translated into 40 languages. He explored the human condition through the protagonists in his novels; the mirror of crime tells of the contradictions in society. "Whatever I write, the reality is much worse," he said.

"We are a story-telling and a story-listening people," said Mankell at the dinner. "It is our capacity to talk and eventually to listen, that will save mankind." He told the story of two old African men sitting on a bench outside his theatre. They were talking about a mutual friend who died in the middle of telling a story. "That's not the way to die, without finishing your story," one of the men remarked.

Mankell died last week.  He has left many stories unfinished. 

Picture of author: Wikipedia Commons

For more on the author visit  http://henningmankell.com/