Chronicler of the winds

You're right. I have a thing for Henning Mankell novels. I also have a thing for reveiwing books using the quotes that I find inside of them. The story of Nelio begins with his small African village being viciously attacked by young bandits. Nelio says, "At that moment it felt as if the world died. Even though many of us were still alive, we were actually dead. Even the spirirts which were fluttering restlessly all around, fell to the ground like a rain of tiny, cold dead stones.". Nelio, the main character tells the story of his life, full of magic, superstition, survival, loyalty, and the amazing human spirit. When Nelio was asked to shoot another boy in order to prove that he was a man, he made a critical decision that changed his life. "I made a decision that in all probability would mean my own death. But if I didn't do what I knew I had to do, my life would lose all meaning. I could not shoot my brother." And then Nelio encounters a magical, mysterious dwarf, who is on a long journey to a destination unknown, who says, " A path that you dream about and that's supposed to show you the way can't be nearby, anything important is always hard to find." After wandering with the dwarf for a bit, Nelio gets to a city and makes himself at home in the belly of a statue. Nelio is one of a street gang of interesting characters, one of which who grows plants in his pants pockets. This has to be one of my favorite characters yet. Nelio has deep thoughts about the city he dies in, "On that day, beneath the unrelenting sun, I discovered the true face of the city. I saw how the poor were forced to eat their lives raw. There was never any time for them to prepare their days, not those who were contantly forced to fight on theoutermost bastions of survival. I looked at this temple of the absurd, which was the city and maybe also the world, and it resembled whatI saw all around me. I was standing in the center of the dark cathedral of powerlessness."