The
Mirror of Crime:
Bob Cornwell talks to European best-seller
Henning Mankell
Henning Mankell is a most unusual
crime writer. Of course it helps that he is Swedish, for most Swedish crime
writers languish in their native tongue. But most crime writers start with a
set of characters – a plot idea and perhaps a place. Mankell starts with an
issue.
But Mankell’s irresistible police novels are not political tracts. His hero,
Inspector Kurt Wallander, whilst an excellent policeman, is an ordinary man
who is troubled by many aspects of the society in which he operates.“If I’m
to keep on being a policeman,” he remarks in Sidetracked,
one of the three Wallander books so far published in the UK, “I have to understand
why.” This approach, together with the fact that the issues that confront Sweden
(racism, the abuse of children for example) are also issues that trouble ordinary
people everywhere, accounts I believe, for Mankell’s extraordinary success across
Europe and elsewhere.
As well as being a novelist, Mankell also pursues a separate career as a playwright
and theatre director (his father-in-law is Ingmar Bergman, the legendary Swedish
film and theatre director) and spends at least half of his time, along with
his wife, running the Teatro Avenida in Mozambique. He has four children.
In Sweden, the nine-book Wallander series is complete, a problem for a successful
author (he explains his solution – an imaginative one – during the interview).
Of the three books so far published here, the first of the series, Faceless
Killers, published in Sweden in 1991, was picked up by Harvill last
year. But for reasons known only to Harvill, the second book to be published
here was Sidetracked,
the fifth in the series. The latest is The
Fifth Woman
(published in Sweden in 1996) the sixth in the series. In October Harvill
will publish The
Dogs of Riga, the second book.
We meet in the Meridien Hotel, Piccadilly. The greying 53 year-old Mankell speaks
slowly, with the precision (and the occasional inaccuracies) of someone who
doesn’t speak English every day. However, he knows parts of England very well,
particularly Middlesbrough, to which he sailed regularly as a young merchant
seaman.
Is it a problem for you to talk about books you wrote up to ten years
ago?
No,
it’s not. Faceless
Killers was written about ten years ago. I find it astonishingly
interesting to talk about, because I’m not the same person. It means that I
can see now that I am a little different from the way that I felt and thought
when I wrote the earlier books. On the other hand I can also see that I feel
and think the same.
Have we lost anything by not getting the series in the proper order?
Yes and no. I believe that all the novels in the series could be read independently.
But on the other hand the books were written in a chronological order. But no
I wouldn’t say that they have lost anything. But there is obviously a little
confusion. I think that it was in Germany the father of Wallander died in the
wrong order, so to speak (laughter).
Am I right in thinking that your life, until the Wallander books that
is, has been primarily concerned with the theatre?
No, I wouldn’t say that. My first novel was published when I was 21
years old. I have always had readers, always. I found out from my publisher
that none of my novels has been in the red. Every one has been successful in
that sense, but what happened with the Wallander stories was that I got many
more readers. But I think that already from the beginning, I divided my time
into work in the theatre, as a playwright, as a director – and writing. And
that is what I do even today. Just one week ago I finished a play for a theatre
in Stockholm. But I do not direct any more in Sweden, because I don’t have time.
So I only direct in theatre in Africa.
Was your family background literary or theatrical?
Well actually, my family were musicians. We came from France and Germany, many
years ago as musicians, as violin players, organ players in churches. So the
family has been more into music. But my father was a reading person and he always
encouraged me, my brother and sister to read . He never asked what we read.
So how did this dual career of yours come about?
I decided very early. I can’t remember having any other dream in my life as
a child than being an author. That was what I wanted. But when I was 17 or 18
years old, I found out that the work of a director probably is very similar
to the work of an author. That is, that you create works. And I thought, this
is wonderful. When you write you are completely alone; when you work in the
theatre you are surrounded by people the whole time. So that made me interested
in the work of a director. And I was quite successful immediately. It made it
possible for me to let the theatre pay for my work as an author. If I directed
one play, it would give me five months [of complete isolation] to write. That,
in the beginning, was important.
When did you discover a facility for writing?
I was six years old and it was my grandmother who taught me. I can still remember
the miracle that I could put word after word, make a sentence, then more sentences,
making a story. I still remember the sensation of that. I suppose it was that
at that moment I became an author.
Did you write stories as a child?
Yes. The first thing I wrote, because when you are a child you imitate, was
a one page summary of Robinson Crusoe. I’m
so sad I don’t have it anymore. I remember the sensation of writing, I had it
from the beginning, so I never actually thought of anything else. OK, when I
left school, I was a sailor. But that was part of my university of life - to
go where I wanted.
I believe you were first published as a writer of children’s books...
No. The first three or four novels were more outspoken political novels. It
was only when I was forty or something that I first wrote a story for young
people. In one way I do not like to talk about children’s books, because I strongly
believe that a good story can be read by anyone.
Have you read much crime fiction?
I would say yes and no. I have steadily read a writer like John Le Carré,
if you can call him a crime writer, always from The
Spy Who Came in from the Cold in 1963. I haven’t read, well I have
read, but not in that passionate way, the classical authors like Agatha Christie.
What interests me is that I try to work in that old tradition that goes back
to the ancient Greeks, to use the mirror of crime to look at a whole society.
I still do not hesitate to say that the best crime story ever written is Macbeth
by Shakespeare. No-one seems to think that it is a crime story, but that is
precisely what it is. And another crime story is Heart
of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. So what I try to do is work in that
very old tradition. I would never ever think of writing a crime story for the
sake of itself. I really wanted to talk about certain things in society.
But you are following in a crime story tradition also, that of the police
novel; in Sweden, in the tradition of writers like K. Arne Blom and in particular
that of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Did they influence you in any way?
When Sjöwall and Wahlöö wrote their ten novels in the 60’s, I was still very
young. But I read them and I thought they were good. And I thought they worked
in that tradition that I had already started to think about. So naturally they
sort of influenced me. I also think that at least some of Ed McBain’s novels
worked very well. Those I liked. So naturally you are influenced by a lot of
traditions, whether you want to or not. But I must say that the author who has
inspired me most is John Le Carré, because he is interested, as I am, in the
mental landscape of things. I mean, what is Wallander doing? He is going around,
thinking, page after page after page. And that is what interests me. The thinking.
You mentioned that your early books were politically inspired. Yet your
Wallander books are, I think, less overtly political than those of Sjöwall/Walhöö.
Why is that?
I think you must divide those ten novels into two halves. The first five were
much better than the last five. In the last five when Wahlöö was already very
ill, they started to do what I don’t intend to do. They used satire and they
made the political message too obvious. I don’t intend to do that. I think it
is better to have it as a sub-text.
When you started to think about the Wallander novels had you any experience
of police work? Or did you have to research it?
Well, I grew up in a family where some people were involved in the system of
justice: a prosecutor, a judge. I have always had a feeling, since I was a child,
that the system of justice is very important. I didn’t have any experience of
police work so I did have to do some research, in the beginning. The police
force in Sweden liked my first book very much. It has been no problem to get
all the help I want. I can go wherever I want, and see whoever I want.
Sjöwall/Wahlöö planned a finite series of ten books. You seem to have a similar
target in mind...
They are already written, all of them. There are nine.
And Wallander will not be resurrected..?
First let me tell you why did I stop. I did it, not because I was bored, on
the contrary, I did it out of respect for the reader and for myself. I wouldn’t
stand for the situation where a reader pays a lot of money to buy a novel, and
after fifteen pages feel that the author is bored. So when I wrote the ninth
novel, I still enjoyed it very much. And then I stopped.
But what will happen now is that next year I will start to write not nine but
three novels, with the daughter of Wallander who becomes a police-woman, in
the foreground, with Wallander in the background.
Did you always know there were going to be nine Wallander books?
I think I thought in the beginning, four. When I had written the second, I decided
to write eight, and when I was in the seventh I realised there could be a last
one.
How did you come to write Faceless
Killers, the first Wallander book?
I think this question is the most important question that anyone can ask. Because
that explains everything. In 1989 I had been a very long time in Africa. I had
been one and a half years without visiting Sweden. When I came back I realised
immediately that a ticking bomb in Swedish society was the increase in racism.
So I decided to write about that. And because to me the actions of racism are
criminal actions, I decided: OK I’ll use the crime story. And at that time I
realised that I needed a police officer..
And so, this is quite funny, today is the 21st of May. I looked it up in an
old diary, and it was on the 20th of May 1989 that Wallander was born. I took
the name out of the telephone book. A good name, I thought. But to me it is
important that he was born out of a need. It was never: I have a man here, what
story will I give him?
Is it coincidental that Faceless
Killers was published in 1991, five years after the assassination
of Olaf Palme and at a time when, for the first time since the mid-70’s, a conservative
coalition had been voted into power?
First of all, I think that the murder of Olaf Palme [1986], isn’t as important
as people think. It was naturally important at that time. Many times I hear
that Swedish society was changed, something happened. That’s not true. I mean
the changes were not dependent upon one person. Already at that time we had
some feeling that the society that the old Social Democrats tried to build up
was crumbling. The problem is that [the changes] have created in Sweden a society
that wasn’t necessary. We could have solved a lot of those problems without
throwing the baby out with the bath water. And that has created a lot of problems
in Sweden. Now to me, the fundamental thing that is the sub-text of all these
novels is the discussion of the relationship between democracy and the system
of justice. What worries Wallander is that if people start to doubt whether
the system of justice is really clean or credible then that is a threat to democracy.
Because you cannot have a democracy if you don't have a system of justice that
works well, that’s obvious. That is what I am talking about indirectly in all
these novels. And I can see that, from the letters I get from readers, that
they discuss these things too.
Does your living in Mozambique affect your view of Sweden?
I always thought that living in Africa makes me a better European. Distance
is always good. I think half of the Wallander stories have been written in Africa.
Why did you set the novels in a relatively rural setting, rather than
say, Stockholm?
I was very conscious about what I was doing. At that time, at the end of the
80’s, up till then in Sweden, I suppose like in many countries, you could still
talk about some kinds of crime that only happened in big cities.You can go to
a small city now and buy any kind of drug that you find in the big cities. At
that time that wasn’t possible. That is one reason that I chose a little place.
The second is the fact that I was living there. I have a farm down there.
From the start Wallander is a very human character. He is divorced, he
has problems with his daughter and his father. Had you a clear idea about how
he might be developed?
I decided from the beginning that what I wanted to do was to create a character
that was always changing. I wanted a character like you and me. We are, for
sure, not the same person tomorrow as today. And I really worked a lot with
that. In the first novel he has an opinion, he starts to doubt it in the second,
he changes it in the third. In the fourth novel I spoke with a friend of mine,
a doctor, and I said: OK, if you look at this guy, he is 44 years old, he is
living his life, what kind of disease would you give him? (Laughter). After
a while he said: Diabetes! To me it was very important; that he is changing
makes him credible. That is another reason why he has become so popular.
The books put great emphasis on teamwork. Was that important to you?
I think it is because that is a fact. Successful police forces are always team
forces.
One thing I do miss: that kind of black humour that policemen develop,
that often enables them to keep going...is that alien to Swedes?
If I go back now, I suppose that if I had written some of these novels today,
I would probably have added a little more humour. At that time I was a bit afraid
of coming too close to satire. If you use black humour, people can start to
think that now he is into the satire. And I was maybe a bit afraid of that.
A remarkable feature of the books we’ve seen so far is the realism and
plotting of the investigation. How important is that to you?
Very important.
Do you work out your plot well in advance?
Oh yes. When I start to write I know everything. It happens sometimes that I
write the end first, just to provoke myself a little. I don’t believe it when
authors say that they start writing and see what happens.That’s bullshit. It’s
not true. You have to know the story. Then it happens, on the way, that you
find a new idea. But that you can control. If you know everything, you can immediately
see whether it is a good idea or not. And I try, this is just for myself, to
think before I start, how many pages [shall I write]? And I usually manage to
say to myself: this is going to be 400 pages. And it is very rare that I miss
by more than five pages.
Writers in the UK are often pressured by their publishers to produce long
books. Is that something you have experienced?
Nothing like that. I try to not bulk it out too much, but on the other
hand I am afraid of books that are too short. I tell the story the
way
I tell it.
Serial killers, which feature in both Sidetracked
and The
Fifth Woman, have been a factor in the success of certain books and
films, but with little basis in reality. What is the reality in Sweden?
What has happened is that we know that during the last forty years there has
been an increase in serial killings in the Western world. Scientists in the
United States still struggle with why. We have had some cases in Sweden and
we still don’t know why it is happening.
In Sidetracked
it is quite easy early on in the book to deduce both the killer and the underlying
motive. Was this intentional? Oh yes. The challenge to me – I’ve never
succeeded yet, completely, to do it – but I would like one time to write on
the first page what has happened, why it has happened, then write 500 pages
after that, and people would still like reading it. For me it is the process
of the investigation that is more important than whodunit. That you can sort
out in the beginning. I think that it is interesting when the reader knows more
than a lot of the characters, and can see how they came to that conclusion.
So that was what I decided.
In the similarly structured The
Fifth Woman, neither the perpetrator or the motive is quite so easily deduced...
I like to create a variety in the way I tell the stories.
An underlying theme in both books seems to me to be what Wallander regards
as the increasing spiritual poverty in Sweden – and the consequences for the
young...
I think the general answer has to be that whatever I write, it has to start
with a question. There must be something I would like to write about. I know
that the question when I started to write Sidetracked
was this very simple question, "What are we doing with our children?"
In The
Fifth Woman the question was, "What happens when people are
not relying on the system of justice anymore", so they start to take things
in their own hands, especially women.
I have such simple starting points for everything that I write. I cannot write
anything good if I don’t have a question. And if I know everything from the
beginning then I wouldn’t write about it.
If I have a criticism, it is that the social context of The
Fifth Woman, in which vigilante action groups start to appear
across the country, is not really explained. Is this because the books have
not appeared in the proper order?
Yes. That is a problem. I agree to that. Not only is [the ground] prepared [in
previous books], but it comes back later too.
In this book Wallander specifically ties the changes in Swedish society
to the point where people throw out their old socks rather than darn them, in
other words, to rising prosperity...
What I tried to talk about in The
Fifth Woman
was that we have created a society where we throw away people in the
same way as we throw away old socks. The ultimate point about a consumer society
is the way that you are also consuming people. I think this is a terrible problem
that we are facing in our part of the world. This theme runs as a parallel line
throughout the book, and Wallander returns to the ‘darning socks’ idea later
in other novels too.
Economically speaking at least, Sweden would seem to be a good place to
live. Yet you seem very pessimistic. Why?
Yes and no. I wouldn’t use the word pessimistic. I am worried. I am very very
worried about the way in which society works, where we are going. Because it
wasn’t necessarily so. And I also believe that it is not too late to reverse
the changes. I wouldn’t call myself a pessimist. I am worried, and the letters
I get from readers say that they have the same worries. I have found out that
Wallander is a kind of spokesman really for the worries of a lot of people.
Do you think that accounts for the big international success of your books?
I have really seen that most obviously when I speak to people in societies as
different as those of Finland, Germany and Italy. They come back to the same
points. And I believe that that fact, plus the fact that Wallander is a person
who always changing, is at least two of the reasons why he has become popular.
I cannot understand why he is so popular in Korea (laughter). That I will try
to find out.
The serial killer in each book is rather untypical. Why?
Eventually it was a way to give a very very shocking answer to the question:
what do we do with our children? Out of some of them we create monsters. What
do we do with the women? Well, we create people who react in brutal ways.
There is a remarkable coda in The
Fifth Woman: Wallander’s post-arrest interviews with the killer.
Yet, uncharacteristically I feel, he fails to respond to her final appeal. Why?
Even though she is dead, she will come back later. I can tell you in
the first novel about the daughter of Wallander, he will tell the daughter about
that woman, because he has realised so many things and he will say that she
was a very brutal person, but maybe the most honest person he ever met. She
will come back – because she made an impression on him that he will never forget.
By the way, this you cannot know, but sometimes I put in small things in the
way I use the names. The name of the killer is the name of the last person ever
executed in Sweden, in 1912.
Also, in every novel I hide a little thing that I know is wrong. And I try to
see if someone finds out about it. It happens sometimes.
So, a challenge for your UK readers! It’s not wrong, but the significance
of the strange knot used by the Faceless
Killers is never explained...
That
is very very important. When I speak sometimes with old detectives, they say,
"My God, even in the cases we solve, there are always 30 or 40% of things
that we never understand. But we forget about it, we’ve solved it." So
that is real. It irritates some people. In one of the next novels [to appear
in English] there is a discussion about this.
You won the major Swedish crime fiction prize with Faceless
Killers. Is this where your international career started?
No, I think the third novel The White Lioness,
which takes place mainly in South Africa, was the novel that blew out the gates.
It was published in a lot of countries at the same time.
Are you happy with your English translations?
Yes. Those languages where I have some facility, that is English, German, French
and Portuguese, then I check it out. I checked the first ten pages of the translation
here and I said it is good, because it is. In other countries sometimes it is
not good, so it has to be redone. I try to check up a little. Obviously I can’t
do anything with the Koreans (laughter). Or the Japanese. I have to hope. But
I have a very good agent in Denmark, a woman who is very tough and she tries
in various ways to check up.
Is there anything particularly Swedish in the books which might cause
problems for translators?
No. Maybe [it is necessary] to realise the importance of the climate and the
landscape, which always plays a major part in the novels. Swedes are very much
into landscape and climate. I think in the English and German translations they
took proper care of that.
Three of your books have been adapted for the screen...
Three have been adapted, but all of them will be done. I can tell you that last
Friday, the last scene of The
Fifth Woman was shot. So there is still five to go. I picked the
actor who plays Wallander [Rolf Lassgärd], he’s a famous actor in Sweden. And
in my contract, if for any reason, he is unavailable, I have the right to cancel
everything. I won’t accept anyone else.
Have you worked with this actor in the theatre?
Yes, It was quite funny. I spoke with the director of the first film and he
said, " Now we have to think who will play this character." I said,
"Give me a pen, and some paper," and I wrote the name and I said,
"My Wallander is here." He did the same. Then we opened the papers
and we had the same name!
You have also written original material for television? Are they crime
stories?
No, not necessarily. I write at least one play a year for the theatre. They
are never crime stories. I recently finished a play about refugees, living illegally
in the country. They are losing their identities...
So, like the Wallander novels, issue-based...
Oh yes.
The second Wallander book, The
Dogs of Riga, is next for publication in the UK. Care to give us a trailer?
First of all I would say that I have been thinking about writing about the writing
of that novel, because it was very complicated. I went to Latvia, to Riga, and
at that time you couldn’t tell what was happening. I was there at the time of
the Black Berets [Soviet troops sent to Latvia in early 1991, in belated response
to the May 1990 declaration of independence by the Latvian parliament], who
were actually shooting people. To find out about how the police force worked,
I had to meet secretly with a captain of the police force who refused to meet
me officially. I had to meet him at night in a very strange place. And he gave
me the material I needed.
The question in that book is, what will happen when the gates open in Eastern
Europe? We will have, I think, another kind of criminality. That is obviously
the price we will pay for having let down these people for so long. The book
is about the consequences of a liberated Eastern Europe.
Henning Mankell, thank you very much.
Bob Cornwell (
Review - The Fifth Woman / Sidetracked )
Faceless
Killers
Sidetracked,
The
Fifth Woman
The
Dogs of Riga