The Eye of the Leopard

A haunting novel juxtaposing a man's coming-of-age in Sweden with his life in Zambia, from the internationally bestselling author.

Interweaving past and present, Sweden and Zambia, The Eye of the Leopard draws on bestselling author Henning Mankell's deep understanding of the two worlds he has inhabited for more than twenty years.

Hans Olofson arrives in Zambia not long after independence, hoping to fulfill the missionary dream of his friend Janice. He is also fleeing the traumas of his motherless childhood: his father's alcoholism, his best friend's terrible accident, Janice's death, his fear of an ordinary and stifled fate. Africa is a terrible shock, yet he stays and makes it his home. But he never fully comes to understand his place as a mzungu, a wealthy white man among native blacks, and the fragile truce between them. Rumors of an underground army of revolutionaries wearing leopard skins warn him that the truce is in danger of rupturing.

Alternating between Hans's years in Africa and those in Sweden, The Eye of the Leopard is a bravura achievement and a study in contrasts—black and white, poor and wealthy, Africa and Europe—both sinister and elegiac.

Internationally bestselling novelist and playwright Henning Mankell's books have been published in thirty-six countries with more than 25 million copies in print worldwide. He has been awarded the German Tolerance Prize and the Macallan Golden Dagger and has been a three-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize. He divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he has worked as a director at Teatro Avenida since 1985. Steven T. Murray has translated three of Henning Mankell's mysteries, among many other books. The former editor-in-chief of Fjord Press, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.