The shadow girls - Henning Mankell
This book was written in Swedish and published in 2001. Ten years later it turns up in English and even ten years on it is very relevant and surprisingly current. It is the story of a poet Jesper who is moderately famous and his discovery and interaction with the underworld of illegal immigrants. We learn about the life of Tea Bag, Leyla and Tanya. All have tales of horror about how they ended up in Sweden or how life is for them once they got there. There is a lot of train travel, a boxing gym and mad mother and some very funny scenes with Olaf the idiot editor who is trying to get Jesper to write a Swedish crime novel as a money maker.
Interestingly, Jonty is reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the barely veiled references in my book about crime novels are referring to his book. Spooky, Another spooky incident was the mention of New Zealand in both of our books pretty much at the same time as we were reading them. NZ always sounds a little exotic in other peoples books.
This story is not surprising as we know more about the subject than we might have a few years ago but it is still sad and thought provoking. The level of value placed on human life in many countries is probably astounding to most people living in our first world.
I love Henning Mankell's books and this is no exception. Not as good as 'Italian shoes' but a good read.
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