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| Shadows in Twilight out now, When the Snow Fell due in Sept. |
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| Posted 2007-07-27 |
 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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