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Inspector-Wallander.org is the site for English-speaking fans of Henning
Mankell's Kurt Wallander Mystery series.
| The Pyramid coming in English in
Sept. 2008 for UK, US, Canada |
| Posted 23 March 2008 |
 The
final major work in the Kurt Wallander series is set to appear in
English in September 2008.
The Pyramid is Henning
Mankell's collection of five short stories detailing Kurt Wallander's
early life and career:
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When Kurt Wallander first appeared
in "Faceless Killers" back in 1990, he was a senior police
officer, just turned forty, with his life in a mess. His
wife had left him, his father barely acknowledged him; he
ate badly and drank alone at night.
"The Pyramid" chronicles the events that led him to such
a place. We see him in the early years, doing hours on the
beat whilst trying to solve a murder off-duty; witness the
beginnings of his fragile relationship with Mona, the woman
he has his heart set on marrying; and learn the reason behind
his difficulties with his father.
These thrilling tales provide a fascinating insight into
Wallander's character, and demand to be read in one sitting.
From the stabbing of a neighbour in 1969 to a light aircraft
accident in 1989, every story is a vital piece of the "Wallander"
series, showing Mankell at the top of his game. Featuring
an introduction from the author, "The Pyramid" is an essential
read for all fans of Kurt Wallander. |
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In the UK, Harvill (part of Random House) will be publishing
the collection in hardback. The New Press will also release a hardcover
in the US.
Fans in Europe can already
preorder The Pyramid at Amazon.co.uk.
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| Henning Mankell to build village in Mozambique |
| Posted 1 February 2008 |
Henning Mankell is using more than literature to help Africa - his
generous donation of 15 million Swedish Kronor (1.6 million Euros)
to the SOS Children's Villages charity is financing the construction
of an entire village in Mozambique.
According to the SOS Children's Villages website the project
will have "15 family houses for 150 orphaned and abandoned children
and be located in the needy town of Chimoio". Education will also
play a large role in the project:
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A kindergarten and a school
will also be built in the village for the village children
and several hundred children from the vicinity. "Education
is important", emphasizes Henning Mankell. "At the SOS Children's
Village in Maputo there is a girl, a foundling, who is now
starting to study law at university. In some years perhaps
she can work as a lawyer for children's rights. And she
has first-hand experience that nobody else has! She will
have the possibility to help the children in Mozambique
considerably. This girl would not have had any chances in
life if she had not been admitted to the SOS Children's
Village. The children that get this chance will have the
possibility to improve their society." |
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Henning Mankell visiting an SOS Children's Village in Maputo
and the groundbreaking ceremony in Chimoio. Photos by Björn Lindgren
For more information about the project,
read the complete article from Pelle Tagesson or visit the
SOS Children's
Charity website.
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| Kenneth Branagh to play Kurt Wallander in
BBC series |
| Posted 12 January 2008, updated 1 February
2008 |
Actor
Kenneth
Branagh has been chosen by the BBC to portray Inspector Kurt
Wallander in a series of English-language films based on Henning
Mankell's novels. The BBC will adapt Sidetracked, One
Step Behind and Firewall as part of their Wallander
series.
The Local, one of Sweden's news sites for English speakers,
reported on the announcement:
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The three 90-minute crime dramas
are to be filmed this summer on location in Ystad in southern
Sweden, home of fictional detective Kurt Wallander. Mankell's
series of books on the life of the enigmatic police inspector
have achieved great international success, selling 10 million
copies worldwide.
According to Mankell's production company Yellow Bird, the
Academy Award-nominated actor got in touch with them last
year requesting to play the title role.
Branagh told Broadcast: "Wallander is a wonderfully complex
and compelling character and I am excited to be playing
this fascinatingly flawed but deeply human detective," |
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More information about the upcoming Wallander series from the
BBC can be found in
the report from Variety.
Other links include:
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| Shadows in Twilight out now,
When the Snow Fell due in Sept. |
| Posted 27 July 2007 |
Two more entries in Henning Mankell's Joel Gustafsson series of
children's books will be available in English by the end of 2007.
Andersen Press, part of Random House, delivered the second book,
Shadows in
Twilight, in March 2007 and has the third,
When the Snow
Fell, scheduled for release in September 2007. The first
book in the series,
A Bridge to
the Stars, was published last year with the final book,
A Journey to the End of the World due sometime in 2008.
Stephanie Merritt
reviewed Mankell's Shadows in Twilight for the Guardian
newspaper:
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Another sequel that could stand
alone is Henning Mankell's
Shadows
in Twilight (Andersen Press £5.99, pp160), the follow-up
to
A Bridge
to the Stars. Eleven-year-old Joel Gustafson is
bored and lonely in his small town in Fifties Sweden until
he experiences a miracle; he falls under a bus but emerges
unharmed. With a newly awakened spiritual awareness, Joel
decides to perform a good deed in return for his life, and
settles on finding a husband for poor mad, disfigured Gertrud.
His good intentions have disturbing consequences. Mankell's
story always hovers on the edge of magical realism but he
suggests there is no magic as powerful as the imagination
of a melancholy child. |
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Meanwhile, a description of When the Snow Fell has been made
available by Andersen Press:
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Joel is growing up. He is getting
interested in girls. Just look at his New Year's resolutions:
to see a naked lady, to toughen himself up so that he can
live to be a hundred, and to see the sea. They all look
pretty impossible for a motherless boy in Northern Sweden.
Especially as his sailor dad is keen to drown his sadness
in drink, and all the local matrons are narrowly watching
the pair of them. And then he saves old Simon from a frozen
death in the woods, and Joel becomes a local hero. |
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All three of the first books in the series were translated in English
by
Laurie Thompson, who is respected for his previous work on the
Kurt Wallander series and many other Swedish novels. |
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| Mankell's Italienska skor
(Italian Shoes) coming to Sweden |
| Posted 3 October 2006 |
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The latest novel from Henning Mankell was released in Sweden at
the end of September.
Italienska skor
(Italian Shoes) is not a mystery but rather (I believe) a novel
about an older man who looks back at his life and examines how the
choices he made affected him and others:
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Det är vinter
ett av de första åren av 2000-talet. På en ö i yttersta
havsbandet lever Fredrik i en stor tystnad, omgiven av sin
hund och katt, med en myrstack i sitt vardagsrum. En mörk
hemlighet, ett ödesdigert misstag har gjort honom till en
skygg ensling.
En morgon upptäcker
han att det står en kvinna med en rullator ute på isen.
Det är Harriet, den kvinna han svek för över 30 år sedan,
som han lämnade utan att säga ett ord. Nu, när hon snart
ska dö, kräver hon att han ska infria det löfte han en gång
gav henne: Att ta med henne till en avlägsen skogstjärn,
där de skulle simma tillsammans när de hade gift sig.
Detta är början på en märklig och omskakande
resa, som på många sätt kommer att överraska Fredrik. Inte
minst konfronteras han med den dotter som han aldrig vetat
om. Resan genom det vintriga Sverige blir lika mycket en
resa i hans eget liv, som tvingar honom att se vem han egentligen
är.
Den ger honom också möjlighet att en
gång för alla ta ansvar för den katastrof som han orsakat
och som förändrade både hans eget och andras liv. |
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Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet featured an interview with Henning
Mankell called
Många lever för länge and their web site also has an audio stream
where you can listen to Mankell read a section from the book.
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| More Yellow Bird, Firewall DVDs coming
to Sweden |
| Posted 3 October 2006 |
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More DVDs and DVD box sets are going to be released in Sweden in
October.
Brandvägg (Firewall) is one of
Rolf Lassgård's final films as Kurt Wallander (hopefully
he will return for The Pyramid?).
The DVD released in Sweden is listed with only Swedish audio
and subtitle tracks, unlike some previous release which featured
subtitles in English and various Scandinavian languages.
The Yellow Bird series of films continues to deliver new stories.
The 11th and 12th entries will be available in Sweden by early November.
Blodsband (unofficially translated as Bound by Blood)
is due out on 25 October.
Jokern (unofficially translated as The Joker) will
follow a week later on 1 November. A synopsis for each film is available
on our Yellow Bird
series page.
Click on the covers to see a larger image.
Finally, two 4-disc DVD box sets are being made available to
cover the first 8 films in the Yellow Bird series.
Links to purchase these DVDs are listed below:
As always, DVD.se can be a reliable choice for people outside
of Europe while DiscShop.se features low shipping prices in the
EU.
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| South of Sweden magazine interviews Henning
Mankell |
| Posted 7 September 2006, updated 23 March
2008 |
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Skåne's new bi-monthly English-language magazine,
Scandinavian Insider
(formerly South of Sweden),
has chosen Henning Mankell to grace the cover of
their second issue.
The September/October 2006 edition includes an interview with
Mankell by David Wiles that covers more than the usual gloomy Swede
clichés:
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Mozambique is somewhere between
the third and the tenth poorest nation on earth, depending
on which index you use. Even an average European could no
doubt live a pretty good life there. So how does a best-selling
author live? A big ranch in the hills, perhaps?
"Naturally
I could afford to live like that," he says. "But I think
it would be such a brutal offence to the people and the
nation and to my friends. I told myself at the beginning
that I have to live in a way that when my friends come to
my home, they won't be ashamed to ask me to visit them.
Many of my African friends live much better than I do, and
I think that is quite OK. I have a small flat in the city
with two or three rooms. I try to live a simple life." |
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But there's plenty for fans of Kurt Wallander too. Among other
topics, Mankell discusses why he chose to give Kurt Wallander diabetes
in one of the novels.
There's another
article
about the film industry in Ystad featuring Karin Johansson-Mex who works
as a Film Coordinator at the Department of Trade & Industry for
Region Skåne. She talks about the challenges of working on a project
as large as the Yellow Bird series in Ystad as well as the benefits
that it's provided:
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Then one day the producers from
Yellow Bird Films walked into the office of the chairman
of Ystad town council and asked for SEK15m (€1.6m) to finance
the Wallander films they wanted to make in Skåne. They said
they knew they could get the funding to shoot the movie
in the Göteborg area, but would prefer to do it in Ystad
where the story was set. Oh, and another minor point - they
needed a film studio.
"The guy here in Ystad looked at
them like they were crazy," says Johansson-Mex. "But with
the help of Film i Skåne and other people in the industry,
he understood that they were really serious, they meant
this. So then they started to try to gather the SEK15m."
Together with neighbouring municipalities, Film i Skåne,
Region Skåne, and Sparbanken, SEK13m (€1.4) was raised.... |
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Be sure to read
the full
Scandinavian Insider interview with Henning Mankell as well as their look at the
Ystad film industry,
Ystad Can Cut It. Tourism takes the focus in their article
The Southern Belle – Ystad.
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| More news about UK films of Kurt Wallander
series |
| Posted 19 July 2006 |
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Yellow Bird continues to move forward with plans for a British TV
series based on Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander stories according
to an article in the Observer entitled
"Just what we need instead of miserable Morse... a gloomy Swedish
detective."
Reporters Alex Duval Smith and Rob Sharp write that an English-language
Wallander series could be very successful for British broadcasters
because television audiences are eager for a replacement of the
long running Inspector Morse series:
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Morten Fisker, managing director
of Yellow Bird, confirmed he is in discussions with two
major British broadcasters over a multi-million-pound television
production, with a British cast, to be set in Ystad, a small,
13th century port in southern Sweden where Wallander's beat
is centred.
'Every last corner of Oxfordshire has been
investigated,' said Fisker in reference to the landscape
which Morse scoured in his Jaguar Mk II. 'Ystad is exotic
and interesting. The question is not whether Wallander is
going to have an English series but who is going to do it.
We're in talks with several parties, which are among the
biggest and best production companies and broadcasters.'
Channel 4 and the BBC are thought to be involved in the
discussions.
Before the arrival of Wallander on British television,
viewers will be given a taste of Mankell's work in a one-off
Yellow Bird co-production of his mystery The Return of the
Dancing Master. The story will follow another Swedish detective,
Stefan Lindman, who throws himself into the investigation
of a former colleague after discovering he has tongue cancer.
Fisker continued: 'Dancing Master will be a way for us to
get to know British viewers.' |
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Continue reading
the full article at the Observer's web site.
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| Sweden.se "On the trail of Sweden's most
famous detective" |
| Posted 19 July 2006 |
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Sweden.se, a web site promoting Swedish culture abroad, has
an article from writer David Wiles discussing how the Wallander
novels have brought international attention to Ystad.
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The decision by Mankell to give
his character employment with Ystad police has been the
tourism equivalent of striking oil under the town square.
A study carried out for the regional authority has estimated
that 128 million people worldwide will see the Wallander
movies. As a result, tourism is forecast to increase by
between four and ten per cent by 2008, generating millions
of Swedish kronor for the local economy.
Besides obligatory
stops at the Wallander apartment and the hilltop police
station, fans eat and drink at his favorite haunts and stay
at the hotels that feature in the books. The latest addition
to enthusiasts' itineraries is Cineteket, a visitor
center next door to the studios where the Wallander movies
are produced. Here devotees have the opportunity to see
how the movies are made and take a tour that includes the
set of his apartment.
Itta Johnson, head of tourism, says: "Ystad is going
to exist long after Wallander, and it has so much else going
for it. So we are very careful that Ystad does not become
Wallanderland." |
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The article ends with some good news for anxious fans of the
Henning Mankell series, so be sure to read
"On the trail of Sweden's most famous detective" at Sweden.se
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| More Wallander films available in Sweden,
Germany and Spain |
| Posted 19 July 2006 |
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A slew of new DVDs have become available to Wallander fans in
the last few months.
For Sweden, Täckmanteln (The Container
Lorry) and Luftslottet (The Castle Ruins)
are the 9th and 10th entries in the 13 part
Yellow Bird series
with Krister Henriksson starring as Kurt Wallander.
Täckmanteln is available now and
Luftslottet is set to follow on 23 August.
Germany has received two double disc sets from the
Yellow Bird series,
with each set containing two films. Wallander Collection No. 1 includes
Vor dem Frost (Innan frosten/Before
the Frost) and Am Rande der Finsternis (Mörkret/The
Darkness). Wallander Collection No. 2 includes Tod
in den Sternen (Byfånen/The Village
Idiot) and Ein Toter in Afrika (Afrikanen/The
African).
Spanish fans can now purchase Pisando los talones
(One Step Behind) and La leona blanca (The
White Lioness), which means that every current Wallander film based
on one of Henning Mankell's novels is now available in Spain.
Click on the covers to see a larger image
Links to purchase these DVDs are listed below:
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Past news items are available from the News
Archive.
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