After the Fire, Henning Mankell
After the Fire, Henning Mankell
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After the Fire

Author: Henning Mankell, Marlaine Delargy

Narrator: Sean Barrett

Unabridged: 11 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/31/2017


Synopsis

Henning Mankell's last novel, about an aging man whose quiet, solitary life on an isolated island off the coast of Sweden is turned upside down when his house catches fire.

Fredrik Welin is a former surgeon who retired in disgrace decades earlier to a tiny island on which he is the only resident. He has a daughter he rarely sees and his mailman Jansson is the closest thing he has to a friend, and to an adversary. He is perfectly content to live out his days in quiet solitude.

One autumn evening, he is startled awake by a blinding light--only to discover that his house is on fire. With the help of Jansson, he escapes the flames just in time wearing two left boots. Dawn reveals that everything he owns is now a smoldering pile of ash and his house is destroyed--forcing him to move into an abandoned trailer on his island. A local journalist, Lisa Modin, who wants to write a story about the fire, comes into his life. In doing so, she awakens in him something that he thought was long dead. Soon after, his daughter comes to the island with surprising news of her own. Meanwhile, the police suspect Fredrik of arson because he had a sizable insurance claim on his house. When Fredrik is away from the archipelago, another house goes up in flames and the community realizes they have an arsonist in their midst. After the Fire is an intimate portrait of an elderly recluse who is forced to open himself up to a world he'd left behind.

About Henning Mankell

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Deb on March 20, 2020

A fine piece of literature that examines the concepts of aging and death through the eyes of its protagonist, 70-year-old Fredrik Welin. The setting for the story is a Swedish archipelago within which Welin owns/lives on one of the many tiny islands, having inherited his grandparents' home there. The......more

Goodreads review by Paltia on May 14, 2019

As the story opens you are quickly introduced to the narrator. He’s a thoroughly unlikeable character who dismisses and insults those he encounters. He can’t bear to see himself in mirrors, seeing an old man where once he was firm and taut. His initial encounters with his estranged daughter are frau......more

Goodreads review by Paul on January 22, 2020

"A person who has lost everything doesn't have much time. Or perhaps the reverse is true. I didn't know." " She asked me about the history of the house and the island, how long I had lived there and how I saw my future. The last question was the most difficult to answer. I simply said that I hadn't ye......more

Goodreads review by Kathy on February 19, 2020

This was Henning Mankell's final novel. I read it directly after reading the first in the series, Italian Shoes. His theme in the two books - aging and death. The entrance of Dr. Fredrik Welin's daughter Louise into his solitary life on an island brings joy, pain and a cause for remembrance of exper......more

Goodreads review by Nigel on October 03, 2017

In brief - At time it is wonderfully poetic and often darkly so. At times it gets bogged down in an old man's ramblings - fine in a sense as that is what the book is about in part but it also makes it slow. Somewhere between 3 and 4 I guess. Having not read any Mankell books previously I was intrigue......more