Synopses & Reviews
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..
About the Author
Henning Mankell is an internationally bestselling author who has received numerous awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association’s Macallan Gold Dagger and the German Tolerance Prize. His Kurt Wallander mysteries are global bestsellers and have been adapted into the PBS Masterpiece Mystery! series
Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh. The New Press has published English translations of ten of his Wallander mysteries—
Faceless Killers,
The White Lioness,
Sidetracked,
The Fifth Woman,
One Step Behind,
Firewall,
The Dogs of Riga,
Before the Frost,
The Man Who Smiled, and
The Pyramid—the novels
The Return of the Dancing Master,
Chronicler of the Winds,
Depths,
Kennedy’s Brain,
The Eye of the Leopard,
Italian Shoes,
Daniel, and
The Shadow Girls; and the nonfiction
I Die, But My Memory Lives On: The World AIDS Crisis and the Memory Book Project. Born in 1948, Mankell grew up in the Swedish village of Sveg. He now divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as a director at Teatro Avenida.