Eye of the leopard

Mankell is an excellent writer, not just a mystery writer. I may not have liked the content of this book (the chasm between black and white in Africa), but the writing is a joy to read.

I'd wanted to read Mankell since seeing a Wallander adaptation of Masterpiece Mystery. Our local library had only one Mankell - "The Eye of the Leopard." Pretty disappointing. It's a Swedish smorgasbord of guilt, high-minded intentions, stasis, racism, loathing of racism, loathing of self, loathing

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of family, loathing of Sweden (only the late Olof Palme comes out with reputation intact), African stereotypes, rage, and - really - a woman without a nose who plays jazz trombone. I had to force myself to slog through this self-conscious mess to the end, which has no satisfying payoff. Can't recommend this one.

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Seeking a nostalgic look at colonial rule. Forget it.
A young clueless working class Swede becomes middle-aged, somewhat knowledgeable Swedish-African egg farmer (tens of thousands of chickens) struggling (at first) to rule benevolently over hundreds of African workers. Mankell details the workings

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of a tiered society and how it must fail violently. He focuses on the whites, but a few Africans become recognizable as humans in the mass of local peoples: one westernized, two or three not. Writing is powerful. Story is hopeless, so don't expect to feel uplifted at the end.

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Jumping between Hans Olofson's Swedish childhood in Norrland and adult life in Mutshatsha, Africa, Eye of the Leopard depresses its reader with hopelessness and failure. Hans tries to escape memories of a father driven to drink out of loneliness and a series of personal tragedies by embarking on

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the quest that once belonged to a now deceased girlfriend. Janine wanted to see the mission station and grave of a legendary missionary, but as a 25 year old white European, Hans is confronted with grim realities. Janine's dream is not his to obtain. Not only is he sorely out of place due to ignorance, his skin color is monumentally hated. A series of abandonments haunt him: his father left him for the bottle, Janine died, his best friend disowned him, and his mother just plain vanished when he was a small child. Sweden was a mediocre existence; an ultimate dead end. Even Africa is not what he envisioned for himself. Despite being ready to leave as soon as he arrives, Olofson takes a job on an egg farm. His own actions confound him. While Africa gives him a clean slate from everyone who deserted him and every failure he experienced in Norrland, he can't imagine calling a place like Africa home.
The title of the novel comes from Olofson's obsessive hallucination of a leopard in the African bush. The leopard comes to be symbolic of everything Olofson can't escape.

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Good novel of Swedish guy who goes to Africa for twenty years after some tragic events at home.
Brings home the problems of Africa where the whites and the rich skim money and leave little for the people. Has some adult-level violence and sex talk in parts. I haven't read any of the author's

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Wallender novels but I've seen some TV shows from it.

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