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A Treacherous Paradise (2013)

by Henning Mankell(Favorite Author)

3.47 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0307961222 (ISBN13: 9780307961228)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Knopf

review 1: Hanna is poor girl from Sweden and is made to leave home at 17 to find her own future and a new life for herself. She ends up first of all working as a maid and teaching herself gradually to read and write. Then finds herself working as a cook aboard a ship bound for Australia. However, after marrying a sailor on board, who then dies suddenly, she disembarks in the west coast of Africa. It is set in the early 20th century. Here she encounters racism and prejudice. This she is in the beneficial position of being a white woman in a country full of poor black people, who are regarded as second class. She inherits a fortune and becomes the owner of the biggest brothel in the town. She has encountered nothing but kindness from the black women but over time she can sense... more herself changing and a moral darkening of her character. A monkey is better cared for than the black people in the brothel. It is a well written prose and like Mankells other books is original, with deep characters. Towards the end the book loses pace and structure. I don't think he had decided on an appropriate ending, so it loses a star for the ending which was forgettable and weak. But otherwise a really interesting read.
review 2: Not what you'd expect of Mankell or paradise. Though it features a female main character, it is raw and realistic. Hanna from Sweden knows real poverty in the early 1900's, this was also the time of the Scandinavian exodus to the American Midwest. Set in Sweden and Lourenco Marques, part of present day Mozambique, it is totally feasible, if one is a mariner, to imagine ships of all nations stopping in a port known for the violence of its Portuguese masters. What is unusual is for a white woman to survive there, a real Swedish woman actually did, but this story is fiction. Its a cleverly woven tale. The sparse prose seems to suit Hanna and Mankell: the endless heat and occasional sea breezes, the beauty and brutality. Couldn't put it down. less

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