Henning Mankell: My responsibilty is to react

Interview with Swedish writer Henning Mankell, whose books have sold in
more than 40 million copies. Here he reflects upon his work,
inspirations and the role of the intellectual in society.

Henning Mankell (b. 1948) is best known for his crime fiction and his character Kurt Wallander, a police inspector living and working in the Swedish town of Ystad. In the interview he states that he regards crime fiction as one of the oldest literary genres in the world. Crime fiction, Mankell argues, has always mirrored the surrounding society. In that sense, the ancient drama of Medea or Shakespeare's Macbeth could be seen in that tradition, too. Furthermore, Mankell speaks about his early years, growing up only with a father, though in a family, in which music and books played an important role.

"The real artist is the child", Mankell says, as a child does not see any limits in life and dares to ask all the important questions. Finally, Mankell reflects upon his continuos engagement in current affairs, whether it concerns matters of illiteracy in his second home Africa or his outspoken critic of the state of Israel in relation to the Palestinians. "As a writer, I am an intellectual", Mankell says. "And as an intellectual, I have to speak."

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When people ask me what is my main inspiration

I say it is the ancient Greek drama

if you take a play like Medea that's written 2300 years ago

it is about a woman who murders her children because of jalousy in relation to her husband

if that is not a crime story, I don't know what a crime story is

the only difference is that there is no police officer in it

because in Greece at that time there was no police force

but I can assure you if they had had a police force, there would also have a policeman in the play

but this story uses the mirror of crime to look upon contradictions in society

that is what interests me.

Look at McBeth, take McBeth and put Richard Nixon in there:

you have the same story, in a way.

And then I can say that, yes, there are also pure crime fictions that inspire me.

For example Sherlock Holmes.

Because many histories talk about English society,

about hypocrisy, about many things

So, I don't see any differences by writing crime fiction or another novel

I think, I put up my cheek a little and say that crime fiction is one of the oldest literary genre that exists

it's not invented by Edgar Alan Poe, it's much older than that.

All of my ancestors were musicians, they were playing in churches, organ players and

my grandfather was a composer and I think that when I was young I also thought of myself as a musician

but I realised quite quickly that (I was playing the violin) I would never be as good as I would want to be

so I, in a way, chose another instrument because you have to understand that writing is a sort of instrument you have in your hands

But on the other hand you might say that music is a very essential part of writing

as it is in painting, as it is in sculpturing, as it is in any other kind of art making, I would say

My home was full of music but it was also full of books

and I think I grew up in what you can call a really, really liberal family because

first of all no one said anything if you were late at night reading

and secondly no one asked you what you read

and that is to me a good definition of what is a liberal family

I think that the specific thing with my childhood was the fact that there was no mother around

she had left the family so I grew up with my father and he was very occupied

but I can still remember at night sometimes I would tell him something about what I had read

and he was clever enough to take two minutes to listen to all the stupid things that I said

and about what I read

and I think it is one of the lessons that I learned: you always have to listen to a child

I think that the real artist is the child because if you remember back when you were 4, 5 or 6 years old,

you know, you had an enormous belief in the fact that you could transform a stone into a car,

or a piece of wood into whatever

Now, then you start school and you know what happens

rationality takes over … maybe it is necessary

but later on when you maybe eventually would like to become an artist,

then you have to reconquer the thing you had as a child

I think that it has to do with the sort of connection back to the courage you had as a child

to ask the really, really difficult questions

I sometimes ask people when I am out talking:

who do you think is my greatest idol? or icon?

and people guess this, and that, and I say

no, I have photo, a small photo on my wall

and the greatest idol is myself as a 12 year old

and when I watch this guy, this boy, this me at 12 years old,

I think that at time I was at my best. I didn't see any limit to life.

I believed in imagination, in fantasy, and reality

I thought every mountain was possible to climb, every desert was possible to get through

so I look at that boy and I try to imitate him, I try to be as brave and as good as he was.

The sensation of being able to put one word after another word making a sentence, and then making another sentence,

and then having a story … this is to me a miracle.

And this is the understanding of reading

and then obviously came the next miracle: that you realise that you could do that yourself.

It was the next miracle.

I still remember that the first thing I ever wrote was a verse on Robinson Crusoe on one page

I would give a finger to have that paper left

but I don't have it, it's gone of course … I probably was 6 years old when I wrote it and I, by the way,

still believe that Robinson Crusoe is the best novel ever written

for a very simple reason: because Robinson is not alone on the island before Friday comes,

he is alone on the island with the reader and that's important

you are on that island, with Robinson, … you help him out

that is a genius way of telling a story. I could never think of a plot better than that one

You could take out certain characters in certain books,

take them out of the books and bring them with you as friends.

I think one of the most important thing with art is that you get friends there

you could have a painting somewhere; when you see someone in a painting

you could take that person out of the painting and make that person a friend

that follows you in life.

Art to me is essential to see how the world looks, to understand the world by seeing how other people demonstrate it

it could be Francis Bacon or Goya or Ken Holtz (?)

Sometimes I can understand it immediately

sometimes I don't understand it at all

and sometimes I don't want to understand it. I just want that feeling to be sucked into my universe and stay there

I think real art, whether it is a painting or music, or whatever, always gives you a certain surprise

if there is no surprise, I think it falls down.

I go down to the Prado museum in Madrid once a year, it is a sort of pilgrimage that I do,

I spend two days there.

And you know to walk the rooms full of paintings by Velasquez and then come into Goya, for example,

well, it is not the same museum; it is not the same … it is like it is two different worlds

you could say they are both painters but there is something more they are different in,

they tell me different stories about the human condition

I think you cannot come closer than that to defining art: a good artist tells you A story of life.

Another artist tells you another story, a bad artist doesn't tell you anything.

I'm not afraid of talking about good art and bad art. I think we are living in a time when people are afraid of talking about that

and I think it is not good because we must be able to say that some art is better than other

then we can discuss that: what do you mean by that?, I don't agree with you … but we can have the discussion.

Today I think that critics are very … they lack courage in a way.

I think that if you look through history, in most art, the important kind of art, whether it is sculpture, books or whatever,

there is some dimension of a dream, of a better society

and it's obvious to me and to most people that we are living in a terrible world today

and the most terrible thing with the world today, it does so many problems, it's completely unnecessary

let me just give one example: me as a writer

in year 2012, millions upon millions of children go out in life illiterate, they cannot read, they cannot write

and this is absolutely unnecessary. We could have eradicated illiteracy a long time ago

if we really would have wanted to do it. But we don't do it,

so these people are lost because still reading and writing and the little mathematics are the most important tools you have in life

and I find this so disgusting, such a shame, that obviously I have to talk about it

when people ask me can people buy your books, novels, in Mozambique

I say, "why?". There is only one book important here and that is the ABC book

whether it is a computer program or a book, I don't care

but eradicate illiteracy before you talk about something else

and then we can go on and on, look on the word and most problems that kill people are unnecessary

and I wouldn't understand how could I use my instrument without in one or another way talk about this

I could not understand myself

As a writer I am an intellectual and as an intellectual, my responsibility is to react in a way

to what I see in society

that is the role of the intellectual

at least if you have the idea of being a radical intellectual

for me it goes back to the Enlightenment times of Diderot and Voltaire

the role of the intellectual

and I believe this is right and that is why I act the way I act

I do write, I do write many various things but I also talk if necessary

I would say it is my relation to the ideal of the Enlightenment

and I agree with that, with the fact that you should talk

I agree we are living in a very strange situation:

we have never seen such a flow of information

and never have people known so little

because everything has been done into fragments

just look at TV news in Denmark and Sweden, short news,

the worst case if obviously the US where you don't understand anything of the news

so that is obviously a risk and I agree also that words are misused very much today

very much today

but I think that the word that you and I use will always be the most important in communications

so I think there will always be a way of cleaning up the mess

but what is very difficult for me today is when I read these twitter and blogs

and it's a way of saying that simplifying things is the best thing

and I say, no, complicate things … because is always complicated in a way

so I agree that something is happening with language but I'm not afraid that we will lose it

because if we lose it, we lose our humanity

no, we won't do that

I think there is also a need, among many readers to get long stories

they are so fed up with these short fragments

so, they want a long story. They want, in a way, Dickens

which I also do myself: if I find a good novel which is 400 pages, I'm happy

if it is bad, it doesn't matter if it is 100 or 400 pages

so, I'm not afraid even of the epic story will survive

I know of course that I'll never be able to do everything I want

death will always come to disturb you, you never know when it comes

and some very few moments I can feel a sort of desperation, even a sort of depression about that fright

but that is life. If you listen for example to the string quartets that Beethoven wrote when he was old,

they are presenting you with something completely new in his music

it is like he had ..., when he started to become old, he didn't give a shit about anything

he had nothing to lose so he started to write some very, very new music that the world had never heard before

that is his latest string quartets

so, it might be that things happen when you get older that give you a sort of new freedom,

you don't know that so, this is what I hope for

to me, obviously, life has meaning when I can sit down and try to formulate something

because whatever you do, is trying, you're trying … you never know when you're gonna succeed or not,

but you are trying to do something

that is the closest I can come to a meaning of life in the creativity

I don't think I have a more intelligent answer than that.