The eye of the leopard

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 chooses to stay and make it his home, almost against his instincts. Still, he never fully comes to understand his place as a mzungu, a wealthy white man among native blacks, and the fragile truce between the two groups. Rumors of an underground army of revolutionaries wearing leopard skins warn him that the truce is in danger of rupturing. As he grows increasingly fearful, he returns again and again to the events of the past that drove him out of Sweden. With these shifts in tone and time, Mankell achieves something powerful and haunting, a work that will remind readers of the unsettling mysteries that made him famous while displaying the sociopolitical awareness that is his hallmark. 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.