Quicksand: What It Means to Be a Human Being

by Henning Mankell

Overview

A stunning and poignant autobiographical look at the myriad experiences that shape a meaningful life, by the bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries.
 
“Surely one of the most moving and intriguing farewell notes ever written.... Intensely beautiful in its spirit.” —Alexander McCall Smith, New Statesman

In January 2014, Henning Mankell received a diagnosis of lung cancer. Quicksand is a response to this shattering news—but it is not a memoir of destruction. Instead, it is a testament to a life fully lived, a tribute to the extraordinary but fleeting human journey that delivers both boundless opportunity and crucial responsibility. In a series of intimate vignettes, Mankell ranges over rich and varied reflections: of growing up in a small Swedish town, where he experiences a startling revelation on a winter morning as a young boy; of living hand-to-mouth during a summer in Paris as an ambitious young writer; of his work at a theater in Mozambique, where Lysistrata is staged in the midst of civil war; of chance encounters with men and women who changed his understanding of the world. Along the way, Mankell ponders the meaning of a good life, and the critically important ways we can shape the future of humanity if we are fortunate enough to have the choice. Vivid, clear-eyed, and breathtakingly beautiful, Quicksand is an invaluable parting gift from a great man.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525432159
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/10/2017
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	772,598
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

HENNING MANKELL's novels have been translated into forty-five languages and have sold more than forty million copies worldwide. He was the first winner of the Ripper Award and also received the Glass Key and the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger, among other awards. His Kurt Wallander mysteries have been adapted into a PBS television series starring Kenneth Branagh. During his life, Mankell divided his time between Sweden and Mozambique, where he was artistic director of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo. He died in 2015.

Hometown:

Mozambique, Africa

Date of Birth:

February 3, 1948

Place of Birth:

Stockholm, Sweden

Education:

Folkskolan Elementary Shool, Sveg; Högre Allmäna Läroverket, Borås

Table of Contents

Part I The Crooked Finger

1 The car accident 3

2 People reluctantly on their way into the shadows 7

3 The great discovery 10

4 Quicksand 14

5 The future is hidden underground 18

6 The bubble in the glass 21

7 Last will and testament 25

8 The man in the window 30

9 Hagar Qim 36

10 The lion man 40

11 Ice 44

12 Turning time in a different direction 48

13 A journey into the nether regions 51

14 The young medical student 53

15 A magician and an imposter 58

16 A dream about a muddy trench in Flanders 60

17 The caves 64

18 The floating rubbish dump 69

19 Signs 74

20 The raft of death 77

21 All this forgotten love 82

22 Timbuktu 87

23 A different archive 91

24 The courage to be afraid 93

25 Paris 97

26 The hippos 102

27 A cathedral and a cloud of dust 108

Part II The Road to Salamanca

28 Shadows 115

29 Luminous teeth 120

30 Photographs 125

31 The way out 129

32 Paris in flames, 1348 134

33 How long is eternity? 139

34 Room number 1 145

35 The road to Salamanca, Part 1 149

36 The man who dismounted from his horse 155

37 While the child plays 160

38 Elena 164

39 The awakening according to Plato 168

40 Winter night 172

41 Relief 174

42 Getting lost 178

43 The road to Salamanca, Part 2 182

Part III The Puppet on a String

44 The earth floor 189

45 Moving silently from darkness to darkness 194

46 Mantova and Buenos Aires 199

47 The stupid bird 204

48 Who will be there in the end to listen? 209

49 Salt water 213

50 The buffalo with eight legs 218

51 The secret of cave painters revealed 222

52 The happiness brought by a rickety lorry in the spring 226

53 The war invalid in Budapest 230

54 A visit when something both begins and ends 234

55 The woman with the sack of cement 238

56 A winter in Heraklion 243

57 Catastrophe on a German motorway 248

58 Jealousy and shame 255

59 The twenty-eighth day 260

60 Meeting in an amphitheatre 264

61 A thief and a policeman 269

62 Youth 274

63 The dead body on the bench for the accused 279

64 A. violent north-westerly storm 284

65 A fictitious meeting in a park in Vienna, 1913 289

66 The puppet on a string 293

67 Never being robbed of one's happiness 296

Epilogue 302

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/14/2016
This final volume from Mankell—the Swedish dramatist, theater director, and creator of the bestselling Kurt Wallander novels (and many other books)—includes 67 short essays written in the last two years of his life; he was diagnosed with lung cancer at age 65 and died in 2015. His intelligent eye focuses on predictable topics such as chemotherapy, but he also reflects on art that moves him (a deeply human interpretation of Géricault’s La Méduse, for example), the environment, and social justice, which is the major theme of his life’s work (he calls the developed world’s refusal to eliminate abject poverty “criminal”). He explains that he wrote about crime “because it illustrates more clearly than anything else the contrasts that form the basis of human life.” Just as morality is a major theme, so is mortality. In the essay that gives the book its title, Mankell writes of a childhood fear of “death by quicksand,” and how his cancer rekindled “that same feeling of terror.” But a few weeks after his diagnosis, he realizes that death need not induce panic or resignation, and he notes near the end of this elegant, unflinching volume, “I live in anticipation of new uplifting experiences.” (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Surely one of the most moving and intriguing farewell notes ever written.... Intensely beautiful in its spirit.” —Alexander McCall Smith, New Statesman
 
“An extraordinary book.... Profoundly moving.” —The Guardian

“Quicksand defines life not by its ending but by the creative and humanitarian content that filled—and fulfilled—Mankell’s life.... The essays sharpen with resounding poignancy.” —Financial Times
 
“An extremely moving swansong.... The reader realizes that Mankell has never really been driven by anger but by the tiny, fragile hope that his words and deeds will help in the fight for a fairer world.” —The Independent (London)
 
“[An] absorbing addition to the work of Sweden’s most internationally famous writer since August Strindberg.... Quicksand, a hybrid of essay and memoir, reflects knowledgeably on art, religion, childhood, and the ‘final insensibility’ that is our dying. Rarely has a writer contemplated the mystery of the end of life with such a wide-ranging curiosity.” —London Evening Standard

“Uplifting and, as a memoir, as unusual a creation as [Mankell’s] Nordic detective, Kurt Wallander.” —GQ (London)

“Elegant, unflinching.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

02/15/2017
Swedish writer Mankell, best known for the "Kurt Wallander" mysteries, was diagnosed with cancer in January 2014. Although recovery seemed unlikely, he spent the following two years in chemotherapy. During that time he wrote this book, a reflection on his life from childhood up to shortly before his death in October 2015. Mankell's attention was also tuned toward past civilizations. He connects cave paintings, statues, and other pieces of culture left behind to present-day society as well as his personal life. Then he looks forward, pondering what we will leave behind and what future civilizations will assume about us. At times, Mankell is pessimistic about the future of humanity and afraid that all future civilizations will have to know us by is nuclear waste, but he is never despairing and always appreciative of the life he lived. VERDICT This book is a compelling attempt to leave behind something for future civilizations to stumble upon, to piece together what it meant to be a human in the 21st century. For public libraries; any reader of contemporary literature will find something to delight in here.—Timothy Berge, SUNY Oswego Lib.

Library Journal

2016-11-01
Diagnosed with the cancer that would take his life in 2015, the creator of the Kurt Wallander mysteries (An Event in Autumn, 2014, etc.) casts an impassioned eye on life and death.Readers looking for either a narrative autobiography or a memoir of the Swedish novelist's last illness will need to adjust their expectations. What Mankell offers instead is a commonplace book in which memories of things he's seen or felt over the past 60 years inspire fiercely philosophical ruminations. Mankell retrospectively decides to date the onset of his fatal illness, which he likens to a pit of quicksand, to a car crash he walked away from a week before he first noticed the pain in his neck that sent him to the doctor. He likens cancer therapists to the fraudulent psychic Uri Geller. He recalls examples of appalling cruelty he saw in Budapest and Maputo. He speculates about the biological foundations for the different reasons men and women get jealous, and he confesses how troubled he is "that I shall be dead for so long." Although Mankell's reflections are deeply personal, readers will learn little about the details of his life because he remains resolutely extroverted, a keen observer of the world whose illness encourages him to take the long view. He describes the future ice ages climate scientists have predicted for 10,000 years, 20,000 years, and 60,000 years from now and repeatedly returns to the dim prospects for the Earth and its people, who have come to depend on the integrity of systems to dispose of nuclear waste that is expected to remain dangerously radioactive for 1,000 centuries. "I have written about crime because it illustrates more clearly than anything else the contrasts that form the basis of human life," writes Mankell. After digesting these piercing intimations of mortality, readers will suspect that some subjects illustrate those contrasts even more clearly.

Kirkus Reviews

Sean Barrett’s performance of these 67 essays written by Henning Mankell between his diagnosis with lung cancer and his death faithfully encapsulates the Swedish author’s sense of seriousness and social justice. Mankell ranges across his life, letting us glimpse childhood memories, his satisfaction with running a theater in Mozambique, embarrassment at asking a teenager dying of AIDS if she was afraid of death, and grave concern about the storage of nuclear waste in Finland for 100,000 years. Barrett’s voice and tone expertly incorporate a vague sense of being European and of language translation. His timing and rhythm are so perfect that we can hear the melancholy and joy that shape Mankell’s reflections. Mankell fears being dead for a long time. We, at least, have the large body of work he left behind to enjoy. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2017 - AudioFile

Sean Barrett’s performance of these 67 essays written by Henning Mankell between his diagnosis with lung cancer and his death faithfully encapsulates the Swedish author’s sense of seriousness and social justice. Mankell ranges across his life, letting us glimpse childhood memories, his satisfaction with running a theater in Mozambique, embarrassment at asking a teenager dying of AIDS if she was afraid of death, and grave concern about the storage of nuclear waste in Finland for 100,000 years. Barrett’s voice and tone expertly incorporate a vague sense of being European and of language translation. His timing and rhythm are so perfect that we can hear the melancholy and joy that shape Mankell’s reflections. Mankell fears being dead for a long time. We, at least, have the large body of work he left behind to enjoy. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2017 - AudioFile