A Conversation with Henning Mankell

I am a huge fan of Inspector Wallander, so as soon as I heard that there was a chance for me to interview Henning Mankell, the acclaimed Swedish crime novelist who created Kurt Wallander, I jumped at the chance. While Mankell's new novel, The Man from Beijing, is not a Wallander mystery, this stand-alone book will surely make many Mankell fans, like me, happy.
In person, the author is everything I expected him to be: intellectual, world-weary, and genteel. Our conversation ranged from the good news that a new Wallander series starring Kenneth Branagh will premiere in the fall on Masterpiece Mystery to the fact that the native Swede spends half his year in Africa. I came away from this interview with a new appreciation for Mankell and his work, and I hope you will, too.

