The Eye of the Leopard

Starred review from March 10, 2008
Best known for his Kurt Wallander mysteries (Firewall
, etc.), Mankell alternates between the coming-of-age story of Hans Olofson, a provincial Swede who grows up in a motherless home with an alcoholic father, and Olofson’s later experiences in Zambia in this fine, unsentimental exploration of vastly different cultures. Having come to believe that Sweden holds nothing for him, Olofson decides to go to Africa to visit a mission, prompted by the strangest woman in town, Janine, who’s shunned because of an operation that left her with no nose. Olofson stays in Zambia for 18 years, running a struggling egg farm and dealing with a culture he never fully understands. Mankell is terrific at sketching the cultural differences between the West and Africa—in particular, “the anguish of the independent states.” Sweden and the West may be more pragmatic and less superstitious than Africa, but greed and corruption are universal. Still, it’s the character of Olofson and his complex, unsettling relationship with the Zambians and Africa that make this disquieting novel so compelling.

May 15, 2008
As in his recent "Kennedy's Brain", the author of the best-selling Kurt Wallander mysteries here turns his eye to the differences between Africa and the West, juxtaposing personal struggles with the growing pains of a newly independent state. When Hans Olofson arrives in Zambia in 1969, he is ostensibly fulfilling a dead friend's greatest wish. In fact, he is fleeing the only life he knows, his motherless childhood and alcoholic father, his failed studies and stifling social circumstances, and the loss of all those closest to him. The narrative alternates between Olofson's coming of age in Sweden and his increasingly difficult life in Zambia, where he runs an egg farm. Even after 18 years, Olofson does not fully grasp his position as a white "mzungu" (rich man) among the native blacks and how inappropriate his Western ideas are in a country so completely resistant to them. As the narrative continues, the paranoid fever dreams that open the novel are horrifyingly revealed to be all too plausible given the political situation. Dark and atmospheric, insightful and compelling, this book is appropriate for large fiction collections.Karen Walton Morse, Univ. of Buffalo Libs., NY

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2008
American readers only familiar with Mankells Kurt Wallander crime novels are in for a delightful surprise. In The Eye of the Leopard, he creates a beautiful, heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful coming-of-age novel set both in Sweden and Zambia. The story of Hans Olafsson opens with him suffering through a bout of malaria, convinced he is about to be attacked. This tense opener is followed by a series of flashbacks to Hans lonely childhood in the forests of northern Sweden as well as his eventual arrival in Africa. Mankells signature ability to evoke a sense of place is evident in this early work, published in Sweden in 1990, as he takes us from the cold and claustrophobia of a tiny cabin in Sweden to the heat, dust, and violence of postcolonial Africa, each setting brought to life with an immediacy that leaves the reader alternately frozen and overheatedand altogether unable to break away from this engrossing and tense tale. Much of the drama here comes from Hans Zambia years, from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, when his stature as a mzungu, or rich man, forced him to come to terms with being a white man in a hostile black country. A powerful exploration of the stresses and challenges of freedom.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)