THE EYE OF THE LEOPARD
Henning Mankell
The New Press
Fiction
ISBN: 9781595580771

Henning Mankell’s THE EYE OF THE LEOPARD is a disturbing and fascinating novel that begins in 1956. The story depicts the coming of age of a Swedish boy whose early traumas lead him to grow into a humane man who must escape his life in Sweden. He has grown up in a small town and lives with his alcoholic father, who dreams of returning to the sea: “Hans [Olofson] knows how much it hurts his father to have to live so far from the sea…[in a] cold hole in the interior of melancholy southern Norland…that lies hidden away in the heart of Harjedal.” The dense forest that surrounds their home is slowly driving his father insane. His mother left the two of them and was never heard from again. All that Hans has of her are a few faded photographs.

The small isolated town is full of the kinds of people found in most insulated communities: there’s gossip, backstabbing, competitiveness, little privacy and the need to find a scapegoat. But as is the case in most of these places, when trouble strikes, someone is there to give a hand. Unfortunately for Hans, his best friend has a terrible accident and ends up in a “place” far away where he survives in an iron lung.

Left on his own he befriends Janine, the town’s “freak” who, due to a surgical mistake, has no nose. As their friendship grows, she tells him her dream of going “to the mission station in Mutshatsha…a forlorn and desiccated” outpost that is a symbol “of the great loneliness that is possible to experience on the Dark Continent.” However, Hans has not yet found out these truths; he knows only that he has committed himself to take the journey Janine yearned for. But he must wait. The time has come for him to decide if he’s going to go into “town” to continue his education. This, coupled with the claustrophobia he experiences, becomes the impetus for him to leave his home.

As time passes, Hans isn’t sure about what he wants to do with his life. Then he hears of Janine’s death and decides to live her dream as a homage to his friend. Without really thinking through what going to Zambia, South Africa entails, he blithely makes the long trek alone. The times have changed (?) with independence. Upon his arrival, he meets a couple at the station who are heading in the direction he thinks he wants to go --- and before they reach their destination, he is offered the job of overseer of the 200 souls who work the land of one of their friends. Hans tells himself that this is only temporary; he will be leaving this country where the abominable poverty of the blacks is juxtaposed against the rich white ruling class, which he sees as dangerous. He hears a hum and has a sense of something fomenting in the population, something catastrophic, even apocalyptic. But as the months pass, he always finds a reason not to leave just then.

Sometime after settling in, Hans decides it’s time to honor Janine’s dream. He is ready to go to Mutshatsha but has no idea what is in store for him there. The trip takes a long time, though people are helpful along the way. Yet Hans remains frightened, confused and unsure of himself. He keeps wondering why no one asks about his reason for going to Mutshatsha. Despite their good intentions, missionaries are still working there after the independence and have no understanding of what they are up against.

On the way, Fischer, who is driving, tells Hans: “ninety per cent of [the] children will die of bilharzias.” Hans asks why, and Fischer continues: “Who wants to see a child die for no reason…you have to understand that this is why we’re so bitter. If we had been allowed to continue the way we were going, we probably would have got the better of the intestinal parasites as well. But now it’s too late. When you abandoned us, you also abandoned the possibility for this continent to create a bearable future.” And thus begins Hans’s African education, viz a vie the blacks to whom this country is home and the whites who “came here” generations ago and enslaved them, trying to take away their traditions, rituals, sense of community, sorcery and superstitions. The blacks hate both the capitalists and the missionaries, and that is leading to “something” that has built up over years and years of oppression.

Upon his arrival, Hans sees a cluster of low, gray buildings grouped around an open square with a well. As an old man approaches, “[Hans] senses at once that he is not at all welcome. I’m breaking into a closed world. A matter for the blacks and the missionaries.” Silence and little or no movement overwhelm him; “he feels a creeping fear inside.”

More time passes and the simmering hatreds are reaching their boiling point. Hans feels the heat and is stupefied and terrified at the same time. Everyone speaks in languages that are convoluted in their subtexts and hidden messages, riddles or warnings. The ever-present sense of danger and premonitions of the inevitability of a catastrophe invade each character’s psyche and lights the fires of ever-present fear to all of their lives. An underground army whose members wear leopard skins rumbles under the radar, yet everyone is aware of the slaughter they are responsible for. And as he recalls his 18 years in Africa, Hans realizes that he is a man without a country. Nevertheless, he will return to his homeland.

Part picaresque novel, part cautionary tale cemented in a nihilistic framework, THE EYE OF THE LEOPARD is an extraordinary book. In the skilled hands of Mankell, readers cannot escape the depictions of smells, poverty, sickness, hatred, fear and strangers in a strange land who are in danger of losing their lives. He writes with a sharp eye on the experiences of childhood and the memories we carry with us even as we relocate to the other side of the world. No one can run away from himself. It’s more than “culture shock” --- its “soul shock.” As the narrative travels seamlessly back and forth in time and place, the absolute contrasts leap out of the pages: cold country to hot country, a poor black population to rich whites who colonized South Africa, insurmountable cultural differences that collide when universal corruption and overriding greed force confrontations between those from the West and those of Africa.

Henning Mankell is best known for his police procedurals starring Kurt Wallander. His prose is powerful, and the narrative of THE EYE OF THE LEOPARD is profound. Readers cannot help but be drawn into the worlds of Hans Olofson as he matures from a picaro to a man.

   --- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

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