Overall 3.75/5
Swedish
Drama
Probably best known for his Kurt Wallander detective series, the writing is moving, perplexing and dangerously humorous in Henning Mankell’s intelligent novel about the immigrant experience in The Shadow Girls.
Jesper Humlin is a moderately successful poet whose life is falling apart around him. His girlfriend, Andrea, is threatening to leave him unless they have a baby, his editor has commanded that Humlin’s next book be a ‘crime thriller’ and his elderly mother is running an illegal phone-sex service. Mankell is obviously having fun when he presents the poet’s increasing frustration then outrage at being directed to write crime fiction. Adding to the humour, Humlin’s mother, his stockbroker and writing competitor, Viktor Leander, have each decided to write a crime novel. Surely an easy way to be successful and make money?
The poet, however, is drawn in a new direction by his unexpected encounter with three young immigrant women living on society’s margins in Sweden. Firstly there is Tea-Bag, who has fled from a desperate existence in Nigeria and soulless refugee camp in Spain; then Tanya from Russia, who has escaped a nightmare life as a prisoner in the human trafficking underworld; and finally Leyla from Iran, the only legal immigrant but who remains oppressed by her family’s cruel cultural norms. Humlin’s old friend Törnblum, who manages a boxing club in Gothenburg, insists that Humlin teach these young women how to write about their lives.
After beginning a series of shambolic workshops, Humlin faces new frustrations: the girls’ distrust, their faulty command of Swedish and their continuing need for the protection from the shadows of their former lives. Fear and distrust rule their lives as gradually their stories are revealed. Intermittently, Humlin toys with the idea of using their stories as his raw material and writing a book about them but he becomes aware of his limitations as the vehicle of their liberation from the shadows.
Henning Mankell brings to life the distinct but overlapping voices of Tea-Bag, Tanya, and Leyla in this impressive novel. This is not just about where the women have come from but about what they continue to endure having ‘escaped’ their oppression.
Running Chook Books 