Hennig Mankell se ha convertido desde hace tiempo uno de los escritores suecos contemporaneos mas admirados en su pais y, desde hace poco, uno de los mas leidos en toda Europa y el mundo. Y es que, con la serie de libros protagonizada por el inspector Kurt Wallander -entre los que se incluye La quinta mujer- ha alcanzado ya la cifra de un millon de ejemplares. En este caso, la placidez habitual de la ciudad sueca de Ystad se ve rota cuando, con cierto intervalo de tiempo, tres hombres aparecen salvajemente asesinados. Las victimas llevaban una vida apacible y tranquila, dedicadas a la ornitologia, el cultivo de orquideas y la poesia, lo cual hace aun mas incomprensible el casi insoportable sadismo de que han sido objeto. Durante la investigacion del caso, Wallander -un detective vulnerable y con aires de antiheroe- descubre que no solo debe enfrentarse a un asesino de temible inteligencia, sino que este parece guiarse por un sanguinario y turbio deseo de venganza. Cuando por fin la policia cree estar tras la buena pista, un nuevo asesinato da un vuelco a la investigacion y provoca un motin entre la asustada poblacion local. / In an African convent, four nuns and a unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered--the death of the unknown woman covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled and appalled by two murders. Holger Eriksson, a retired car dealer and bird watcher, is impaled on sharpened bamboo poles in a ditch behind his secluded home, and the body of a missing florist is discovered--strangled and tied to a tree. The only clues Wallander has to go on are a skull, a diary, and a photo of three men. What ensues is a case that will test Wallanders strength and patience, because in order to discover the reason behind these murders, he will also need to uncover the elusive connection between these deaths and the earlier unsolved murder in Africa of the fifth woman....

A body is found at an ATM, the apparent victim of heart attack. Then two teenage girls confess to the brutal murder of a cab driver. As Wallander investigates these two seemingly distinct and simple cases, they merge into a great conspiracy....

A powerful, haunting story set in Mozambique by a world-renowned author.

Readers met Sofia previously in Secrets in the Fire, when, at the age of 9, she lost her legs in a land mine explosion in Mozambique.

Now Sofia is almost 20 and pregnant with her third child. Armando, the father of her children, travels to the city for work, coming home on weekends.

One Saturday Armando is very late, and as he stands in the shadows beyond the firelight, Sofia knows he is hiding something from her. She makes her way to town to find out what he is doing... and is devastated to discover that he is involved with another woman.

Sofia ends their relationship but suffers terribly in the face of Armando's rage. In a heart-rending conclusion Armando's life unravels, and Sofia must return to her village to raise her children without him.

Shadow of the Leopard is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal told with clear-eyed compassion and humane and strongly atmospheric insight.

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A haunting and powerful story about war-torn Africa, a mystical orphan boy, and the power of narrative to give a chaotic world order.

In the hot African night a single gunshot cracks the silence. José Antonio traces the sound to the stage of the local theatre company, where he finds Nelio, the young prophetical leader of the city’s street kids, crumpled in blood. Nelio refuses to be taken to the hospital but instead tells Jose his life’s story: how bandits raided his village, his daring escape, and his struggle to survive on the streets. José is irrevocably changed. He becomes the Chronicler of the Winds, revealing Nelios’s magical tale to all who will listen....

From the prizewinning "master of atmosphere" (Boston Globe) comes the surprising and affecting story of a man well past middle age who suddenly finds himself on the threshold of renewal.

Living on a tiny island entirely surrounded by ice during the long winter months, Fredrik Welin is so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ice every morning and lowers himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is alive. Haunted by memories of the terrible mistake that drove him to this island and away from a successful career as a surgeon, he lives in a stasis so complete an anthill grows undisturbed in his living room.

When an unexpected visitor alters his life completely, thus begins an eccentric, elegiac journey--one that shows Mankell at the very height of his powers as a novelist.

A deeply human tale of loss and redemption, Italian Shoes is a testament to the unpredictability of life, which breeds hope even in the face of tragedy.

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Three teenagers in period garb are shot in a secluded Swedish meadow. Inspector Kurt Wallander has only one clue: a picture of a woman no one in Sweden seems to know. Tracking the killer, he always seems to be just one step behind....

Joel Gustafson’s journey toward becoming a man continues.

As it has in the past, the first snow of the year signifies to Joel Gustafson his very own New Year’s Eve. So when the snow begins to fall on a cold November day, Joel gets busy making new resolutions—three, to be exact.

As the winter days pass, life becomes ever more complicated. Joel has questions and the answers don’t necessarily come easily, but he is determined to keep his resolutions—for his father, for himself, and for their future.

In this companion novel to A Bridge to the Stars and Shadows in the Twilight, readers follow Joel’s journey as he realizes along the way that it will require determination, strength, and valor to truly become a man....

After killing a man in the line of duty, Kurt Wallander resolves to quit the Ystad police. However, a bizarre case gets under his skin.

A lawyer driving home at night stops to investigate an effigy sitting in a chair in the middle of the highway. The lawyer is hit over the head and dies. Within a week the lawyer’s son is also killed. These deeply puzzling mysteries compel Wallander to remain on the force. The prime suspect is a powerful corporate mogul with a gleaming smile that Wallander believes hides the evil glee of a killer. Joined by Ann-Britt Hoglund, Wallander begins to uncover the truth, but the same merciless individuals responsible for the murders are now closing in on him....

From internationally bestselling author Henning Mankell comes a gripping mystery and a depiction of every parent's worst nightmare.

When Louise Cantor finds her twenty-eight year old son dead in his apartment, everything indicates it was a suicide. Louise, however, refuses to accept this, and with nothing more than few suspicions and a mother's intuition, she and her ex-husband set out to find what happened. What they discover is a dark underworld of people exploiting the victims of the AIDS epidemic: corrupt businessmen dealing infected blood, suspicious researchers carrying out dangerous tests, and lecherous drug dealers peddling black market medicine. Their investigation takes them across three continents, and leads them into some mighty financial institutions and highest corridors of power, where suddenly their own lives are at stake....

A haunting novel juxtaposing a man's coming-of-age in Sweden with his life in Zambia, from the internationally bestselling author.

Interweaving past and present, Sweden and Zambia, The Eye of the Leopard draws on bestselling author Henning Mankell's deep understanding of the two worlds he has inhabited for more than twenty years.

Hans Olofson arrives in Zambia not long after independence, hoping to fulfill the missionary dream of his friend Janice. He is also fleeing the traumas of his motherless childhood: his father's alcoholism, his best friend's terrible accident, Janice's death, his fear of an ordinary and stifled fate. Africa is a terrible shock, yet he stays and makes it his home. But he never fully comes to understand his place as a mzungu, a wealthy white man among native blacks, and the fragile truce between them. Rumors of an underground army of revolutionaries wearing leopard skins warn him that the truce is in danger of rupturing.

Alternating between Hans's years in Africa and those in Sweden, The Eye of the Leopard is a bravura achievement and a study in contrasts—black and white, poor and wealthy, Africa and Europe—both sinister and elegiac....

The missing piece of the internationally bestselling Kurt Wallander mystery series: the story of Kurt Wallander's beginnings.

Revealing a side of Wallander that we have never seen, the long stories collected in The Pyramid are vintage Mankell. Here, we see Wallander on his homicide first case as a twenty-one-year-old patrolman, as a young father facing unexpected danger on Christmas Eve, as a middle-aged detective with his marriage on the brink, as a newly separated investigator solving the brutal murder of a local photographer, and finally as a veteran detective, with his signature methodical and instinctive work style, discovering unexpected connections between a downed plane and the assassination of a pair of spinster sisters. In these five riveting tales we watch Kurt Wallander come into his own not only as a detective but as a human being...

The powerful story of one girl's indomitable spirit after surviving a land mine in war-ravaged southern Africa.

It is the wise old woman of the village who teaches young Sofia about the secrets in the fire. Within the flames hide all things past and all things yet to be. But not even old Muazena can see the horrors the fire holds for Sofia and her family -- not the murderous bandits who drive them from their home, and not the land mine that takes Sofia's legs.

In her long journey toward recovery, Sofia must still deal with growing up. Along the way, she discovers friends, and foes, in places she'd never expected. Through it all, Sofia draws on a strength she never knew she had, a fire of her own that's been a secret all along.

Real-life land mine victim Sofia Alface is the inspiration for Henning Mankell's stunning novel which puts a very human face on the suffering in Africa.

Key Features: - Land mines, an important, high-profile issue - A gripping, dramatic page-turner and a story full of hope - Readers will relate to the spirited Sofia...

JOEL WILL SOON be 12, and he thinks nothing is going on in the small community where he lives. But he’s wrong. One day, an incident that could easily have been a catastrophe turns into a miracle. Now Joel believes he owes the world a good deed, to prove that he deserved what might have been divine intervention. He thinks up an elaborate scheme, but it doesn’t go as anticipated. Even though his heart is in the right place, feelings are hurt. If he confesses what he’s done and why, will things be put right again?
Readers who met Joel Gustafson, his father, and their friends in A Bridge to the Stars will follow, with appreciation, Henning Mankell’s shrewd depiction, in this companion novel, of the surprising changes in Joel’s existence. Mankell deftly explores Joel’s self-discovery, his realization that lives can be altered in a single moment, and his new understanding that a choice between telling the truth and keeping silent can make all the difference....

In this latest atmospheric thriller, Kurt Wallander and his daughter, Linda, join forces to search for a religious fanatic on a murder spree. Just graduated from the police academy, Linda Wallander returns to Skåne to join the police force, and she already shows all the hallmarks of her father the maverick approach, the flaring temper. Before she even starts work, she becomes embroiled in the case of her childhood friend Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared. As the case that her father is working on dovetails with her own, something far more dangerous than either could have imagined begins to emerge. They soon find themselves forced to confront a group of extremists bent on punishing the world's sinners....

Now available for the first time in paperback from Vintage Canada, this international bestseller is the missing piece of the critically acclaimed Kurt Wallander mystery series: the story of Wallander's beginnings.

The Pyramid is the prequel to the bestselling Kurt Wallander series, and reintroduces readers to a character they thought they knew everything about. Here, we see Wallander as a twenty-one-year-old patrolman, as a young father facing an unexpected danger on Christmas Eve, as a budding detective on the brink of middle age solving a case of poisoning, as an investigator solving the murder of a local photographer, and finally as a veteran detective discovering unexpected connections between a downed mystery plane and the assassination of a pair of spinster sisters. Watching this fascinating character come into his own and develop his signature methodical and instinctive work style, makes for riveting reading.

The Pyramid is vintage Mankell, and a must-have for his many fans....

Here are five stories that trace Wallanders growth into a first-rate detective, first as a rookie cop, then young father and finally a middle-aged divorcé....

On Midsummer's Eve, three role-playing teens dressed in eighteenth-century garb are shot in a secluded Swedish meadow. When one of Inspector Kurt Wallander's most trusted colleagues, someone whose help he hoped to rely on to solve the crime, also turns up dead, Wallander knows the murders are related. But with his only clue a picture of a woman no one in Sweden seems to know, he can't begin to imagine how.

Reeling from his father's death and facing his own deteriorating health, Wallander tracks the lethal progress of the killer. Locked in a desperate effort to catch him before he strikes again, Wallander always seems to be just one step behind....

JOEL WILL SOON be 12, and he thinks nothing is going on in the small community where he lives. But he’s wrong. One day, an incident that could easily have been a catastrophe turns into a miracle. Now Joel believes he owes the world a good deed, to prove that he deserved what might have been divine intervention. He thinks up an elaborate scheme, but it doesn’t go as anticipated. Even though his heart is in the right place, feelings are hurt. If he confesses what he’s done and why, will things be put right again?
Readers who met Joel Gustafson, his father, and their friends in A Bridge to the Stars will follow, with appreciation, Henning Mankell’s shrewd depiction, in this companion novel, of the surprising changes in Joel’s existence. Mankell deftly explores Joel’s self-discovery, his realization that lives can be altered in a single moment, and his new understanding that a choice between telling the truth and keeping silent can make all the difference....

Interweaving past and present, Sweden and Zambia, The Eye of the Leopard draws on bestselling author Henning Mankell's deep understanding of the two worlds he has inhabited for over twenty years.

Hans Olofson lived through a tough childhood. His father drank himself into oblivion, and his mother was completely absent, only faded photographs offered Olofson any hint of what she may have been like. His adolescence was just as trying, and when his best friend and lover, Janine, tragically dies, he flees to Africa to carry out Janine's only real dream in life — to visit the grave of a legendary missionary in isolated Northern Zambia. Upon his arrival in Zambia, Olofson is stunned. He finds it beautiful and mysterious, so he decides to stay and make it his home, eventually taking control of a small farm. It is there that Olofson discovers the fragile truce between the rich newcomers and black natives of the recently independent state . . . a truce that could rupture at any moment.

Alternating between Olofson's years in Africa and those in Sweden, The Eye of the Leopard is a bravura achievement, a study in contrasts — black and white, poor and wealthy, Africa and Europe — and an exploration of the challenges and responsibilities that come with freedom....

El hijo del viento describe el encuentro de un niño de Namibia con la sociedad sueca del siglo XIX. Con un estilo feroz que se situa en las antipodas de sus policiales, Mankell denuncia el colonialismo pseudohumanista de los europeos. El autor conduce a los lectores por un largo viaje al Africa y la Suecia de finales del siglo XIX, en una novela en torno a la desconfianza y al miedo de los paises llamados «civilizados» hacia otras culturas, hacia lo desconocido y diferente. / Uplifting. . . . Chronicler of the Winds seems to widen his repertory, switching between the nightmarish, the dream-like and the grittily realistic... Mankell evokes a saintliness among those whose brief lives have been tempered by genocide, exploitation and hardship. The New York Times. Mankell's evocative, quietly powerful novel, first published in 1995, tells the unbearably sad story of 10-year-old Nelio, a mortally wounded street kid in an unnamed African port city. After revolutionary soldiers kill his family and most of the people in his village, Nelio makes his way to the city where he joins a gang of homeless orphans, eventuallyand reluctantlybecoming their leader....

La noche de San Juan, alguien, agazapado tras un matorral, contempla como se divierten unos jovenes... Por esas mismas fechas, ajeno al drama que se fragua, el inspector Kurt Wallander regresa de sus vacaciones, y en agosto, ya metido en la rutina, empieza a acusar un extraño agotamiento que esta a punto de costarle la vida en un accidente de trafico. Cuando acude al medico, se lleva un buen susto al saber el diagnostico. Para colmo, Svedberg, uno de sus colegas, no aparece a su vuelta de las vacaciones, y una madre presiona a los agentes para que busquen a su hija: hace ya mas de un mes, la joven se marcho de viaje con unos amigos de manera imprevista, y todo indica que las postales que han enviado son falsas. Svedberg, que sigue sin dar señales de vida, ¿no estaba investigando esas desapariciones? Wallander no puede ni imaginar las incognitas que le presentara este caso... ni los sangrientos crimenes que debera resolver, «y cuanto antes», como le pide el fiscal. / Swedish detective Kurt Wallander pursues a long, complex case sure to please those who like weighty police procedurals. Six weeks after three college students are murdered during a Midsummer's Eve party, their bodies hidden to prevent discovery, Wallander's secretive colleague Svedberg is found at home with half his head blown off. Wallander's persistent, occasionally brilliant, investigation points to a connection between Svedberg and the disappearance of the three young people....

In this latest atmospheric thriller, Kurt Wallander and his daughter, Linda, join forces to search for a religious fanatic on a murder spree. Just graduated from the police academy, Linda Wallander returns to Skåne to join the police force, and she already shows all the hallmarks of her father the maverick approach, the flaring temper. Before she even starts work, she becomes embroiled in the case of her childhood friend Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared. As the case that her father is working on dovetails with her own, something far more dangerous than either could have imagined begins to emerge. They soon find themselves forced to confront a group of extremists bent on punishing the world's sinners....

Interweaving past and present, Sweden and Zambia, rich and poor, The Eye of the Leopard is a stunning novel from a modern master.

Hans Olofson arrives in Zambia not long after independence, hoping to fulfill the missionary dream of his recently deceased friend Janice. Africa is a complete shock to Olofson, yet he chooses to stay and make it his home, eventually taking control of a small farm. Here, he learns of the fragile truce between the white and black populations of Zambia, and rumors of an underground army of revolutionaries wearing leopard skins alert him that violence may erupt at any moment. As a wealthy white man, he grows increasingly fearful and returns in his mind to the traumatic events that drove him from Sweden, playing back the complicated events of his past, as his present races toward a thrilling climax....

Torstensson, a lawyer, drives his car along a lonely road. It is the dead of night and he does not stop checking his rearview mirror to see if he is being followed. Suddenly, before him, he sees a chair placed on the asphalt and a human-sized doll sitting on it. Torstensson violently brakes and gets out of his car terrified in order to take a closer look at the ghostly apparition. That is the last thing that he will do with his life. Soon after, Wallander will become involved in a very complicated case of high-level economic delinquency. La sensación de estar luchando contra un enemigo intangible un adinerado y autoritario mecenas, la permanente sonrisa amenazadora del principal sospechoso y una vaga impresión de que su vida corre peligro pondrán a prueba la capacidad de reacción de Wallander....

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 Hesjövallen, 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 Andrén 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 Hesjövallen 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 Hesjövallen murders....