Quicksand : what it means to be a human being / Henning Mankell ; translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson with Marlaine Delargy.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017Copyright date: ©2016Description: 303 pages ; 21 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780525432159
- 0525432159
- What it means to be a human being
- Kvicksand. English
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Main Library | Biography | Mankell, H. M278 | Available | 33111008528669 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
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.
"Originally published in Sweden as Kvicksand by Leopard förlag, Stockholm, in 2014"--title-page verso.
Part I: The crooked finger -- The car accident -- People reluctantly on their way into the shadows -- The great discovery -- Quicksand -- the future is hidden underground -- the bubble in the glass -- Last will and testament -- The man in the window -- Hagar Qim -- The lion man -- Ice -- Turning time in a different direction -- A journey into the nether regions -- The young medical student -- A magician and an imposter -- A dream about a muddy trench in Flanders -- The caves -- The floating rubbish dump -- Signs -- The raft of death -- All this forgotten love -- Timbuktu -- A different archive -- The courage to be afraid -- Paris -- The hippos -- A cathedral and a cloud of dust -- Part II: The road to Salamanca -- Shadows -- Luminous teeth -- Photographs -- The way out -- Paris in flames, 1348 -- How long is eternity? -- Room number 1 -- The road to Salamanca, part 1 -- the man who dismounted from his horse -- While the child plays -- Elena -- the awakening according to Plato -- Winter night -- Relief -- Getting lost -- The road to Salamanca, part 2 -- Part III: The puppet on a string -- The earth floor -- Moving silently from darkness to darkness -- Mantova and Buenos Aires -- The stupid bird -- Who will be there in the end to listen? -- Salt water -- The buffalo with eight legs -- The secret of cave painters revealed -- The happiness brought by a rickety lorry in the spring -- The war invalid in Budapest -- A visit when something both begins and ends -- The woman with the sack of cement -- A winter in Heraklion -- Catastrophe on a German motorway -- Jealousy and shame -- The twenty-eighth day -- Meeting in a amphitheatre -- A thief and a policeman -- Youth -- The dead body on the bench for the accused -- A violent north-westerly storm -- A fictitious meeting in a park in Vienna, 1913 -- The puppet on a string -- Never being robbed of one's happiness.