The Man from Beijing
Henning Mankell, 2007 (trans., Laurie Thompson, 2010)
Knopf Doubleday
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307472847
Summary
The acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, writing at the height of his powers, now gives us an electrifying stand-alone global thriller.
January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjovallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene.
Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an Andrén family in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an Andren ancestor—a gang master on the American transcontinental railway—that describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the Hesjovallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more complicated truth.
The investigation leads to the highest echelons of power in present-day Beijing, and to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But the narrative also takes us back 150 years into the depths of the slave trade between China and the United States—a history that will ensnare Birgitta as she draws ever closer to solving the Hesjovallen murders. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 3, 1948
• Where—Stockholm, Sweden
• Education—Hogre Allmana Laroverket, Boras
• Awards—Swedish Crime Writers' Academy-Best Swedish Crime Novel Award (twice);
Nils Holgersson Prize; Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel; Deutscher
Jugendliteraturpreis; Crime Writers' Assn.-Gold Dagger; Gumshow Award for
Best European Crime Novel
• Currently—lives in Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique
Best known for his series of police procedurals featuring the adventures of Swedish detective Kurt Wallander—selling over 10 million copies worldwide—Henning Mankell has become a mystery master garnering critical acclaim in both the U.K. and U.S. (From the publisher.)
More
Mankell was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and grew up in Sveg (Harjedalen) and Boras (Vastergotland). Mankell's father, Ivar, was a judge and his grandfather, also called Henning Mankell (1868–1930), was a composer. At the age of 20 he already started a career as author and assistant director at the Riks Theater in Stockholm. In the following years he collaborated with several theaters in Sweden.
In his youth Mankell was a left-wing political activist and a strong opponent of the Vietnam War, South African apartheid and Portugal's colonial war in Mozambique. In the 1970s Mankell moved from Sweden to Norway and lived with a Norwegian woman who was a member of the Maoist Communist Labor Party of Norway. Mankell took part in the party's activities but never himself joined the party.
After living in Zambia and other African countries, Henning Mankell was invited to become the artistic director of Teatro Avenida in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. He now spends at least half the year in Maputo working with the theatre and writing. Recently he built up his own publishing house (Leopard Förlag) in order to support young talents from Africa and Sweden.
He is married to Eva Bergman, daughter of Ingmar Bergman. On 12 June 2008 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Mankell recently donated 15 million Swedish kronor to SOS Children's Villages for a village for homeless children in Mozambique. Mankell has said he's giving away half of his income to charitable causes.
Books, plays, screenplays
Mankell has written 10 crime novels with Kurt Wallender, his fictional police inspector who lives and works in Ystad, Sweden. The novels center on an underlying question: "What went wrong with Swedish society?" The series has won numerous awards (see above). The ninth book, The Pyramid, is a prequel: a collection of four novellas about Wallander's past, the last one ending just before the start of Faceless Killers. Ten years after The Pyramid, Mankell published another Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, which he said would definitely be the last in the series.
The Wallender series has been adapted into television mini-series in Sweden and the UK's BBC.
In addition to the Wallender series, Mankell has written more than 15 works of fiction, including, four other crime novels. He has also written works for children, including two series—the Sofia books and the Joel Gustafsson series.
Mankell is also a prolific playwright and screen writer with 40 some plays to his name (20 of which have been released) and four screenplays, which include three tv mini-series.
Global politics
Mankell participated in the Protests of 1968 in Sweden, protesting against, among other things, the Vietnam War, the Portuguese Colonial War and the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Furthermore, he got involved with the society Folket i Bild/Kulturfront which focused on cultural policy studies. During his stay in Norway, he got in contact with the Norwegian Workers' Communist Party and took an active part in their actions.
In 2009, Mankell was a guest at a Palestinian literary conference. Thereafter, he claimed to have seen "repetition of the despicable Apartheid system that once treated Africans and coloured as second-class citizens in their own country". He also found a resemblance between the Israeli West Bank barrier and the Berlin Wall. Considering the environment the Palestinian people live in, he continued, it is not astonishing that "some decide to become suicide bombers....it is strange that there are not more of them". "The Israelis" would "destroy lives" and the Israeli State is not to have a future in its current form, as a two-state solution would not reverse the "historical occupation". He claimed not to have encountered antisemitism during his journey, just "hatred against the occupants that is completely normal and understandable".
In 2008, speaking about nationalism and Norway (a country formerly forced into a Union with Sweden), he stated that "Nationalism is almost spiteful in nature. It can sometimes be glimpsed as something brown behind the waving Norwegian flags." (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
If a Raymond Chandler effect is the goal, the humdrum plot interferes.... The intrigue surrounding the murders dissipates. Detectives fade to distant bystanders.... Mankell’s fierce instinct for social criticism is admirable. If only it didn’t sabotage the opportunity for old-fashioned whodunit delight.
Mike Peed - New York Times
It may not be flawless, but Henning Mankell's The Man From Beijing is a great mystery that belongs in the company of other knockout masterpieces of moral complexity and atmosphere like Dorothy Sayers's The Nine Tailors, Robert Goddard's Beyond Recall, Barbara Vine's A Dark-Adapted Eye and Mankell's own brilliant 2002 gloomfest, One Step Behind. The new novel's ambitious plotting alone should be dissected and taught in MFA programs...a brilliant tale of suspense and substance that dedicated mystery readers will want to savor.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post
Mankell succeeds in transfixing the reader with a masterly balance of character sketches and pell-mell storytelling. He is entirely convincing in his depiction of ordinary people becoming enmeshed in geopolitical intrigue.
Wall Street Journal
The book cements Mankell’s reputation as Sweden’s greatest living mystery writer.... Roslin is a sort of Nordic Miss Marple.
Los Angeles Times
Mankell’s new book is an original but still chock-a-block with gory crime combined with hints of the late Stieg Larsson’s social concern and John le Carré’s international intrigue.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Over the past decade or so, Henning Mankell has built a large audience that, even now, in the (mostly) snowless U.S., can’t wait to find copies of his new snowbound work of mystery. The Man from Beijing more than repays such patience. It’s a terrific police procedural.... Despite the broad reach of the plot, the book never puts the reader in danger of losing interest.
Alan Cheuse - Dallas Morning News
A massacre in the remote Swedish village of Hesjövallen propels this complex, if diffuse, stand-alone thriller from Mankell (The Pyramid). Judge Birgitta Roslin, whose mother grew up in the village, comes across diaries from the house of one of the 19 mostly elderly victims kept by Jan Andrén, an immigrant ancestor of Roslin's. The diaries cover Andrén's time as a foreman on the building of the transcontinental railroad in the United States. An extended flashback charts the journey of a railroad worker, San, who was kidnapped in China and shipped to America in 1863. After finding evidence linking a mysterious Chinese man to the Hesjövallen murders, Roslin travels to Beijing, suspecting that the motive for the horrific crime is rooted in the past. While each section, ranging in setting from the bleak frozen landscape of northern Sweden to modern-day China bursting onto the global playing field, compels, the parts don't add up to a fully satisfying whole.
Publishers Weekly
A 2006 massacre in Sweden reverberates back to 19th-century China and America in this stand-alone by the author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries. When 19 of the 22 residents of a Swedish hamlet are brutally murdered, Judge Brigitta Roslin discovers that the victims include her late mother's foster parents, so she looks into the case, offering a theory counter to that of local authorities. Even after the arrest of a local man who confesses and then commits suicide, Roslin continues probing in a quest that eventually takes her to China and puts her in mortal danger. And she finds that revenge—whether sweet or best served cold—is a powerful motivator even after a century and a half. Verdict: Most compelling at the beginning and end, this sprawling novel becomes a leisurely examination of history's injustices and consequences as well as an intriguing postulation of how China might meet its most pressing societal problem. Mankell humanizes the earnest, even meddlesome Roslin, so that the reader can't help but wish her well. Already an international best seller, this seems destined for success here, too. —Michele Leber, Arlington, VA
Library Journal
The opening set piece, in which the murders are discovered, is a stunner, and the finale, in a London restaurant, is equally gripping. Yes, Mankell overextends himself here, but he also shows why he remains a must-read for anyone interested in the international crime novel. —Bill Ott
Booklist
A sweepingly ambitious tale of corruption, injustice and revenge that ranges over three continents and 140 years, from the creator of Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander (The Pyramid, 2008, etc.). The first person to discover the massacre at Hesjovallen is so horrified that he suffers a fatal heart attack and is hit by a truck. The stabbing and hacking of 19 neighbors and their pets in ten houses has decimated the village. Duty officer Vivi Sundberg, called to the scene, swiftly realizes that all the victims except for one unidentified boy share one of three last names—Andersson, Andren or Magnusson—and theorizes that in a community likely to be marked by inbreeding, they may all be members of a single family. Birgitta Roslin, a judge in Helsingborg whose mother's foster parents were among the victims, connects the horror to a smaller-scale but equally brutal murder spree: the slaughter of Jack Andren and his wife and children in Reno, Nev. A long flashback to the shameful treatment of Chinese slave laborers on the American transcontinental railroad in the 1860s supplies further hints as to the motive. But it's not until Birgitta travels to Beijing to accompany a friend on a business trip—and to gather information about a mysterious Chinese man who booked a hotel room near Hesjovallen the week of the crime—that a clear portrait of the killer begins to emerge. The improbable but touching friendship Birgitta strikes up with Hong Qui, the sister of a powerful player in the high-stakes game of Beijing construction, serves as the nerve center of Mankell's sprawling tale, even though it reveals more information to the reader than to Birgitta. Another long detour, this one to contemporary Zimbabwe, adds new resonance to the massacre back in Sweden before [Mankell] brings down the curtain in London's Chinatown. Breathtakingly bold in its scope. If Mankell never links his far-flung, multigenerational horrors closely together, that's an important part of his point.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Man from Beijing:
1. The first so-called character introduced in The Man from Beijingis an animal—a wolf. Why might author Henning Mankell have chosen to open his work with a such a creature?
2. The central investigators in this story are Detective Vivi Sundberg, along with her police team, and Judge Birgitta Roslin, an "informal" investigator with a personal interest in solving the crime. How do the two women differ from one another? How would you describe Sundberg? What were your expectations for her...that she was the heroine?
3. What kind of character is Birgitta Roslin? Some reviewers find her an engaging heroine, others a hapless bore. What's your take? Do you see her as a fully developed, complex being...or is she one-dimensional, an "action figure" whom Mankell simply uses to move the plot forward?
4. Why does Sundberg ignore the evidence that Roslin finds so convincing? And why does Roslin reject the confession that the police have in hand in favor of a seemingly far-fetched theory?
5. How does Roslin solve the book's mystery—through logical reasoning based on empirical evidence (like Sherlock Holmes)...or through feelings and intuition? Is one method more legitimate than the other...or are both equally valid?
6. Comment on Roslin's marriage? Why is it an unsatisfying relationship? What else, other than her marriage, seems to have atrophied in her middle-age?
7. Talk about Birgitta's query about herself—whether she's "a servant of the law, or of indifference?" What does she mean...and why does ask herself that question of herself?
8. What role does Sweden's climate play in his novel—in terms of setting the mood and operating symbolically?
9. One of Henning Mankell's concerns in this novel is the way in which ordinary people, "absorbed in their own thoughts, their own fate," are caught up by global forces far beyond the scope of their everyday lives. How does this idea play out in his novel? Does Mankell's vision have relevance to your own life?
10. The book contains three distinct parts. Did you find the shifting venues, both time and place, distracting...or engaging? Does the book hold together for you as a taut, suspenseful mystery and political thriller? Or is it overly discursive, going off in too many directions to maintain the tautness established on page one?
11. Follow-up to Question 10: Do you think the book's social criticism enhances or detracts from its whodunit plotline? Would you say, for instance, that Mankell's emphasis on global politics adds moral depth to the story...or slows its pacing?
12. How would you describe the political stance of the book with regards to the world economic order?
13. Were you shocked to learn of the treatment of the Chinese workers brought to the U.S., often by force, to build the transcontinental railroad? Or were you aware of the slave-like conditions?
14. Does the plot's dependence on coincidence, especially during the China section, bother you? Do the coincidences undermne the book's believability factor for you...or do you accept coincidence as a strange, inexplicable, yet very real part of life?
15. Talk about Ya Ru and his global ambitions for China, including the colonization of Africa. When did you make the connection between Ya Ru the murdered Swedes?
16. What draws Roslin into a friendship with Ya Ru's sister? In what ways does Hong Qui differ from her brother?
17. How is contemporary China depicted in this novel, vis-a-vis both it's own past and its current role in the global economy?
18. What was your reaction to the 10-page speech about China's communist past and present day aspirations? Did you read it or skip parts of it...or all of it?
19. One of Roslin's colleagues says, "I didn’t think it was possible to give democracy a monetary value. If you don’t have a state functioning on the basis of law, you don’t have democracy." Does this statement have truth? Does it have wider implications...around the globe? Or is this comment off the mark, simply too broad an assertion to have relevance? Care to comment?
20. Do you buy Mankell's take on Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe?
21. How would you describe this book? Is it a mystery? A detective procedural? An international thriller? A family epic? A discourse on global politics? An historical novel? A revenge novel?
22. Have you read other books by Henning Mankell—particularly his Kurt Wallender series? If so, how does this compare with that popular series? If not, does this book inspire you to read other Mankell works?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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