The Shadow Girls - by Henning Mankell

About the Book

A poet of middling acclaim who is saddled by his underwhelming book sales, an exasperated girlfriend, a demanding mother, and a rapidly fading tan starts an unlikely writing group that requires more of him than he first imagined in this humorous and heartbreaking work.

Book Synopsis

From the New York Times-bestselling author: A story of one man's awakening and "a heartfelt reminder of the many people whose struggles are never known" (The Plain Dealer).

Jesper Humlin, a poet of middling acclaim and underwhelming book sales, is facing a crisis. His boy-wonder stockbroker has squandered Humlin's investments, and his editor, who says he must write a crime novel to survive, starts pitching and promoting the nonexistent book despite Humlin's emphatic refusals. Then, when he travels to Gothenburg to give a reading, he finds himself thrust into a world where names shift, stories overlap, and histories are both deeply secret and in profound need of retelling.

Leyla from Iran, Tanya from Russia, and Tea-Bag, who is from Africa but claims to be from Kurdistan (because Kurds might receive preferential treatment as refugees)--these are the shadow girls who become Humlin's unlikely pupils in impromptu writing workshops. Though he had imagined their stories as fodder for his own book, soon their intertwining lives require him to play a much different role.

Offering both surprising humor and heartrending tragedy, The Shadow Girls is a "passionate and entertaining" triumph that will astonish longtime fans of Mankell's acclaimed Kurt Wallander novels as well as readers new to his work (The Daily Telegraph).

Review Quotes

"Both passionate and entertaining -- and a strong indication that the Swedish are not as lugubrious as their crime fiction makes them out to be."
--The Telegraph

About the Author

Bestselling author Henning Mankell has received numerous awards, including the Crime Writers' Association's Macallan Gold Dagger and the German Tolerance Prize. His Kurt Wallander mysteries are global bestsellers and have been adapted into the PBS Masterpiece Mystery! series Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh. He divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique. Ebba Segerberg has translated One Step Behind, Firewall, and Before the Frost by Henning Mankell (all available from The New Press) and Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.