Kennedy's Brain
Product Description
Internationally bestselling novelist Henning Mankell delivers a terrifying thriller inspired by the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Henning Mankell, the acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, has put his unmistakable stamp on this gripping new thriller. Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her son kept a secret apartment; Sydney, Australia, to find Aron, her estranged ex-husband and Henrik's father; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns the awful truth behind an AIDS hospice. Her investigation reveals how much her son concealed from her as she uncovers the links between his death, the African AIDS epidemic, and Western pharmaceutical interests, while those who dare help her are killed off.
In the tradition of John le Carré's The Constant Gardener, Kennedy's Brain was inspired by Mankell's anger at ongoing inequities that permit a few people to have unprecedented power over the many poor Africans who have none. Already a bestseller in Europe, Kennedy's Brain is both a thrilling page-turner and a damning indictment of inhuman greed in the face of the African AIDS crisis.
From Publishers Weekly
In Mankell's engaging but overly polemical stand-alone crime novel, Louise Cantor, an archeologist working in Greece, returns home to Sweden to discover her grown son, Henrik, lying dead in his own bed. Cantor, who refuses to accept the police theory that Henrik killed himself, launches her own investigation. (The book's title refers to one of the mysteries surrounding the JFK assassination, which had become a bizarre metaphor for the secretive Henrik.) In her quest for answers, Cantor journeys to Australia in search of her estranged husband; to Barcelona, where Henrik had an apartment and a surprisingly large bank account; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns of the devastation wrought by poverty, AIDS and greed. Mankell, author of the wonderful Kurt Wallender series (Faceless Killers, etc.), is a deft and imaginative plotter and an insightful observer of the human condition, but here his righteous anger over the AIDS crisis in Africa and the exploitative role of the pharmaceutical industry overshadows the mystery solving. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Henning Mankell's books have been published in thirty-six countries with over 25 million copies in print worldwide. A three-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize, he divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique. Laurie Thompson, the former editor of the Swedish Book Review, has translated more than forty books from the Swedish, including seven by Henning Mankell. He lives in rural Wales.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Driven by the memory of seeing an African man die of AIDS, Mankell sets aside his Kurt Wallander series to deliver a scathing indictment of how drug companies exploit, and Western nations ignore, that continent's mounting medical horrors. There's nothing metaphorical about the core subject, but Mankell tempers his stridency by wrapping it inside a moving tale of loss. Swedish archaeologist Louise Cantor returns from the Greek dig site she oversees to find her son, Henrik, an apparent suicide. As unreasonable in her grief as any parent who loses a child, Cantor at first refuses to accept even the fact of his death and then sets out to prove he was murdered. The clues are scanthe's found in pajamas when he always slept nude; his computer is missingbut a mother sometimes intuits more than the best police investigator can. As she puzzles over Henrik's seeming obsession with the postautopsy disappearance of JFK's braina
Internationally bestselling novelist Henning Mankell delivers a terrifying thriller inspired by the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Henning Mankell, the acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, has put his unmistakable stamp on this gripping new thriller. Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her son kept a secret apartment; Sydney, Australia, to find Aron, her estranged ex-husband and Henrik's father; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns the awful truth behind an AIDS hospice. Her investigation reveals how much her son concealed from her as she uncovers the links between his death, the African AIDS epidemic, and Western pharmaceutical interests, while those who dare help her are killed off.
In the tradition of John le Carré's The Constant Gardener, Kennedy's Brain was inspired by Mankell's anger at ongoing inequities that permit a few people to have unprecedented power over the many poor Africans who have none. Already a bestseller in Europe, Kennedy's Brain is both a thrilling page-turner and a damning indictment of inhuman greed in the face of the African AIDS crisis.
From Publishers Weekly
In Mankell's engaging but overly polemical stand-alone crime novel, Louise Cantor, an archeologist working in Greece, returns home to Sweden to discover her grown son, Henrik, lying dead in his own bed. Cantor, who refuses to accept the police theory that Henrik killed himself, launches her own investigation. (The book's title refers to one of the mysteries surrounding the JFK assassination, which had become a bizarre metaphor for the secretive Henrik.) In her quest for answers, Cantor journeys to Australia in search of her estranged husband; to Barcelona, where Henrik had an apartment and a surprisingly large bank account; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns of the devastation wrought by poverty, AIDS and greed. Mankell, author of the wonderful Kurt Wallender series (Faceless Killers, etc.), is a deft and imaginative plotter and an insightful observer of the human condition, but here his righteous anger over the AIDS crisis in Africa and the exploitative role of the pharmaceutical industry overshadows the mystery solving. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Henning Mankell's books have been published in thirty-six countries with over 25 million copies in print worldwide. A three-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize, he divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique. Laurie Thompson, the former editor of the Swedish Book Review, has translated more than forty books from the Swedish, including seven by Henning Mankell. He lives in rural Wales.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Driven by the memory of seeing an African man die of AIDS, Mankell sets aside his Kurt Wallander series to deliver a scathing indictment of how drug companies exploit, and Western nations ignore, that continent's mounting medical horrors. There's nothing metaphorical about the core subject, but Mankell tempers his stridency by wrapping it inside a moving tale of loss. Swedish archaeologist Louise Cantor returns from the Greek dig site she oversees to find her son, Henrik, an apparent suicide. As unreasonable in her grief as any parent who loses a child, Cantor at first refuses to accept even the fact of his death and then sets out to prove he was murdered. The clues are scanthe's found in pajamas when he always slept nude; his computer is missingbut a mother sometimes intuits more than the best police investigator can. As she puzzles over Henrik's seeming obsession with the postautopsy disappearance of JFK's braina
Greece, fictionMothers and sons, fictionStockholm (sweden), fictionAids (disease), fictionFiction, thrillers, generalWomen archaeologists, fiction
RELEASED2007
PUBLISHERHarvill Secker
LENGTH336
LANGUAGEEN
Henning Mankell was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of a judge. He grew up in the towns of Sveg and Borås. His grandfather, also called Henning Mankell (1868–1930), was a well-known composer. At the age of 20, Mankell was the assistant director at the Riks Theater in Stockholm, and he was also writing. In the 1970s he moved to Norway, where he lived with a woman who was a member of the Maoist Communist Labour Party, although he never officially joined the Party. He moved to Africa and lived in several African countries, and in 1985 he founded the Avenida Theater in Maputo, Mozambique, where he continues to spend about half of every year. In 1997 he began his most well-known series of novels, a series of murder mysteries set in Ystad, Sweden, featuring the police detective Kurt Wallander. He also established a publishing house, Leopard Förlag, to publish young talents from both Africa and Sweden. He is married to Eva Bergman, daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
Kennedy's Brain
Product Description
Internationally bestselling novelist Henning Mankell delivers a terrifying thriller inspired by the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Henning Mankell, the acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, has put his unmistakable stamp on this gripping new thriller. Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her son kept a secret apartment; Sydney, Australia, to find Aron, her estranged ex-husband and Henrik's father; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns the awful truth behind an AIDS hospice. Her investigation reveals how much her son concealed from her as she uncovers the links between his death, the African AIDS epidemic, and Western pharmaceutical interests, while those who dare help her are killed off.
In the tradition of John le Carré's The Constant Gardener, Kennedy's Brain was inspired by Mankell's anger at ongoing inequities that permit a few people to have unprecedented power over the many poor Africans who have none. Already a bestseller in Europe, Kennedy's Brain is both a thrilling page-turner and a damning indictment of inhuman greed in the face of the African AIDS crisis.
From Publishers Weekly
In Mankell's engaging but overly polemical stand-alone crime novel, Louise Cantor, an archeologist working in Greece, returns home to Sweden to discover her grown son, Henrik, lying dead in his own bed. Cantor, who refuses to accept the police theory that Henrik killed himself, launches her own investigation. (The book's title refers to one of the mysteries surrounding the JFK assassination, which had become a bizarre metaphor for the secretive Henrik.) In her quest for answers, Cantor journeys to Australia in search of her estranged husband; to Barcelona, where Henrik had an apartment and a surprisingly large bank account; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns of the devastation wrought by poverty, AIDS and greed. Mankell, author of the wonderful Kurt Wallender series (Faceless Killers, etc.), is a deft and imaginative plotter and an insightful observer of the human condition, but here his righteous anger over the AIDS crisis in Africa and the exploitative role of the pharmaceutical industry overshadows the mystery solving. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Henning Mankell's books have been published in thirty-six countries with over 25 million copies in print worldwide. A three-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize, he divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique. Laurie Thompson, the former editor of the Swedish Book Review, has translated more than forty books from the Swedish, including seven by Henning Mankell. He lives in rural Wales.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Driven by the memory of seeing an African man die of AIDS, Mankell sets aside his Kurt Wallander series to deliver a scathing indictment of how drug companies exploit, and Western nations ignore, that continent's mounting medical horrors. There's nothing metaphorical about the core subject, but Mankell tempers his stridency by wrapping it inside a moving tale of loss. Swedish archaeologist Louise Cantor returns from the Greek dig site she oversees to find her son, Henrik, an apparent suicide. As unreasonable in her grief as any parent who loses a child, Cantor at first refuses to accept even the fact of his death and then sets out to prove he was murdered. The clues are scanthe's found in pajamas when he always slept nude; his computer is missingbut a mother sometimes intuits more than the best police investigator can. As she puzzles over Henrik's seeming obsession with the postautopsy disappearance of JFK's braina
Internationally bestselling novelist Henning Mankell delivers a terrifying thriller inspired by the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Henning Mankell, the acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, has put his unmistakable stamp on this gripping new thriller. Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her son kept a secret apartment; Sydney, Australia, to find Aron, her estranged ex-husband and Henrik's father; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns the awful truth behind an AIDS hospice. Her investigation reveals how much her son concealed from her as she uncovers the links between his death, the African AIDS epidemic, and Western pharmaceutical interests, while those who dare help her are killed off.
In the tradition of John le Carré's The Constant Gardener, Kennedy's Brain was inspired by Mankell's anger at ongoing inequities that permit a few people to have unprecedented power over the many poor Africans who have none. Already a bestseller in Europe, Kennedy's Brain is both a thrilling page-turner and a damning indictment of inhuman greed in the face of the African AIDS crisis.
From Publishers Weekly
In Mankell's engaging but overly polemical stand-alone crime novel, Louise Cantor, an archeologist working in Greece, returns home to Sweden to discover her grown son, Henrik, lying dead in his own bed. Cantor, who refuses to accept the police theory that Henrik killed himself, launches her own investigation. (The book's title refers to one of the mysteries surrounding the JFK assassination, which had become a bizarre metaphor for the secretive Henrik.) In her quest for answers, Cantor journeys to Australia in search of her estranged husband; to Barcelona, where Henrik had an apartment and a surprisingly large bank account; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns of the devastation wrought by poverty, AIDS and greed. Mankell, author of the wonderful Kurt Wallender series (Faceless Killers, etc.), is a deft and imaginative plotter and an insightful observer of the human condition, but here his righteous anger over the AIDS crisis in Africa and the exploitative role of the pharmaceutical industry overshadows the mystery solving. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Henning Mankell's books have been published in thirty-six countries with over 25 million copies in print worldwide. A three-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize, he divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique. Laurie Thompson, the former editor of the Swedish Book Review, has translated more than forty books from the Swedish, including seven by Henning Mankell. He lives in rural Wales.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Driven by the memory of seeing an African man die of AIDS, Mankell sets aside his Kurt Wallander series to deliver a scathing indictment of how drug companies exploit, and Western nations ignore, that continent's mounting medical horrors. There's nothing metaphorical about the core subject, but Mankell tempers his stridency by wrapping it inside a moving tale of loss. Swedish archaeologist Louise Cantor returns from the Greek dig site she oversees to find her son, Henrik, an apparent suicide. As unreasonable in her grief as any parent who loses a child, Cantor at first refuses to accept even the fact of his death and then sets out to prove he was murdered. The clues are scanthe's found in pajamas when he always slept nude; his computer is missingbut a mother sometimes intuits more than the best police investigator can. As she puzzles over Henrik's seeming obsession with the postautopsy disappearance of JFK's braina
Greece, fictionMothers and sons, fictionStockholm (sweden), fictionAids (disease), fictionFiction, thrillers, generalWomen archaeologists, fiction
RELEASED2007
PUBLISHERHarvill Secker
LENGTH336
LANGUAGEEN
Henning Mankell was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of a judge. He grew up in the towns of Sveg and Borås. His grandfather, also called Henning Mankell (1868–1930), was a well-known composer. At the age of 20, Mankell was the assistant director at the Riks Theater in Stockholm, and he was also writing. In the 1970s he moved to Norway, where he lived with a woman who was a member of the Maoist Communist Labour Party, although he never officially joined the Party. He moved to Africa and lived in several African countries, and in 1985 he founded the Avenida Theater in Maputo, Mozambique, where he continues to spend about half of every year. In 1997 he began his most well-known series of novels, a series of murder mysteries set in Ystad, Sweden, featuring the police detective Kurt Wallander. He also established a publishing house, Leopard Förlag, to publish young talents from both Africa and Sweden. He is married to Eva Bergman, daughter of Ingmar Bergman.
