The eye of the Leopard

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / General / Mankell, Henning
On Shelf At: Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / General / Mankell, Henning	4-week checkout	On Shelf

This translation originally published: London: Harvill Secker, 2008.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The wrong starting point. submitted by BickfordT on August 16, 2011, 9:52am I am waiting too long to write this review. The story is no longer fresh in my mind. I can't see the characters as strongly as I did two weeks ago, but yet, they remain. Olofson suffers from his run-away mother and a childhood tragedy. He falls in love, dreams, and makes mistakes. He recognizes himself most clearly in a pile of ruined, forgotten bricks. Most of the folded triangles I made in this book seem to be the thoughts of an external Mankell, not Olofson. Like "We live in an era when the mind is less and less often allowed to be amazed by distance and time...", and "It's possible to travel without actually travelling. A departure always begins inside yourself.", and "A white man can never help Africans develop their country from a superior position, he thinks. From below, from inside, one can surely contribute...", and "We all have a lonesome, abandoned dog sitting and barking inside us...". I can't tell if this story is supposed to be pro or anti imperialism, but I enjoyed Motombwane's explanation of how Olofson perceives the happenings incorrectly, "You're on the wrong track. You're not thinking logically because you've chosen the wrong starting point. Your white brain is deceiving you. If you want to understand you have to think black thoughts. And that's not something you can do, in the same way that I can't formulate white thoughts.". Olofson seems to own this thoughts near the end of the book, "Twenty years' experience of this continent hasn't changed a thing, since I never questioned white assumptions.", and "My life is built of bad cement, he thinks. The cracks run deep, and someday it will all come crashing down.".