Mankell Family History
Henning Mankell (1948- )
JANUARY 2010 UPDATE:
The BBC has recently broadcast the first of three Wallander novels: "Faceless Killers". These three new movies with Kenneth Branagh as Kurt Wallander will be broadcast on PBS Mystery at a later date. Here is a preview for "Faceless Killers".
Here is a web site for Kurt Wallander fans.
Additional Henning Mankell books are listed below.
June 2009 Update:
In May, 2009, PBS stations across the US broadcast three Henning Mankell's novels, "Sidetracked," "Firewall," and "One Step Behind" on PBS Masterpiece Mystery!. Kenneth Branagh portrays Detective Kurt Wallander in these productions, filmed in southern Sweden and originally broadcast by the BBC. A set of DVDs of the PBS series is available from your local bookstore or online from amazon.com. The title is "Wallander: Sidetracked / Firewall / One Step Behind". Other Henning Mankell books and DVDs are available, too.
Henning Mankell is a prolific Swedish novelist, playwright, and humanitarian who is devoted to fighting world poverty. To learn more biographical information about Henning, check out his official website, henningmankell.com. For those who may want to know how Henning is related to Mankell family in the US, here is a generational chart, connecting Henning's and my family to a common ancestor, Johan Herman Mankell.
Henning has written several plays, children’s books and novels, including several books about fictional police officer Kurt Wallander who solves murders in the Ystad area of Sweden. The Wallander character is a man of sadness, solving crimes in an increasingly modern world, where he increasingly feels out of touch and old. He is described as “a decent, hard-working, pragmatic, unglamorous detective…He has a broken marriage, a troubled grown-up daughter, and a fraught relationship with his ageing father….He’s a bit lonely, a bit cynical…he feels like giving up but never does.” His books have been translated into several languages, including English, and are international bestsellers. There have been several film and television adaptations of his Kurt Wallander murder mysteries. The following Kurt Wallander books are available in the US with their Swedish publication and English translation dates:
- Faceless Killers 1991, 1997
- The Dogs of Riga 1992, 2001
- The White Lioness 1993, 1998
- The Man Who Smiled 1994, 2005
- Sidetracked 1995, 1999
- The Fifth Woman 1996, 2000
- One Step Behind 1997, 2002
- Firewall 1998, 2002
- Before the Frost 2002, 2005
- The Pyramid (5 short stories) 1999, 2009
Several of Henning Mankell's novels and mysteries do not feature the Kurt Wallander character. Some of these books include:
- Italian Shoes
- The Man from Beijing
- Depths
- Kennedy's Brain
- Chronicler of the Winds
- The Return of the Dancing Master
Henning has written several 'young adult' books. Three feature a teen-aged protagonist, Joel Gustafson.
- A Bridge to the Stars
- Shadows in the Twilight
- When the Snow Fell
In 2007 Kurt Mankell traveled to Ystad, Sweden, the local setting for the Kurt Wallander novels. Below are two pictures which Kurt took on his trip to the "Ystad Studios" where Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander movies (not the Kenneth Branagh series) are filmed.
Building in Ystad Sweden which is the set of Kurt Wallander movies.
On the set of a Kurt Wallander movie in Ystad, Sweden: a door to the apartment of "K. Wallander"
If you want to see more Mankell and Wallander sites in Ystad, here's the link to a brochure which lists various locations from the books, and includes maps and photographs.
Henning has received many literary prizes, including the UK’s Golden Dagger Award, and Sweden’s Astrid Lindgren award for children’s literature. Sidetracked won Sweden’s 1997 award for Best Crime Novel.
Henning lives half of each year in Sweden and the other half in Mozambique, where he is the director of Teatro Avenida, a theater in Maputo. As part of his dedicated fight against AIDS in Africa, Henning is involved in the Memory Project, in which parents dying of AIDS write their memories for their children to read following the parents’ deaths. As Henning stated to a reporter of The Observer, “Books are messengers. Like the diary of Anne Frank, they speak for the dead. The Memory Books will be the most dramatic books of our time, the heritage of being human. AIDS is the most catastrophic disease in the history of mankind. It is killing off complete societies.”
The history of the Mankell family now takes us to the United States and to Swedish emigrant Herman Wilhelm (HW) Mankell.