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"The
Man From Beijing" by
Henning Mankell
; Knopf (384 pages,
$25.95
)
———
Some
writers are novelists who write mysteries. Some are
mystery writers who write novels now and again. Yet
others, whatever they write, are novelists.
Henning Mankell
belongs to this last class. A man who lives in both
Sweden
and
Mozambique
, Mankell is gaining fame here as a mystery writer,
particularly for his
Kurt Wallander
books. Those got a huge boost when
PBS
aired the
BBC
three-film Wallander miniseries, starring
Kenneth Branagh
, on "Masterpiece" (a second series is now
airing on the Beeb).
Mankell's
latest, "The Man From Beijing," though not a
Wallander novel, is the equal to any in that series.
It's the work of a writer with the imagination, brains,
resources, and joinerly craft needed to make thoughtful,
challenging, exciting, artistic novels.
"The
Man From Beijing" involves a mystery, to be sure,
but it is a novel foremost. What I applaud most is its
ambition. Its aim is broad and high, startlingly so:
It's out to shake us up, say something about the world
we're in, about the nature of our lives in this world at
this moment.
It has
much to say, much to question, about
Sweden
,
Europe
,
Asia
,
Africa
,
the United States
(each in its turn a setting in the book), socialism,
communism, capitalism, history, democracy, racism, urban
life, forensics, justice, love, friendship, and revenge.
All these threads issue from the first word, interweave,
and pay out right to the last.
The tale
begins with a judge's swearing-in statement, then passes
to a hungry wolf in winter, crossing the border from
Norway
into
Sweden
. That wolf is also the last thing we see. In between is
a tale of horrific murder, Swedish law enforcement and
justice, a marriage, a brother and sister, the spectacle
of
China
convulsed in passage between one social system and
another, and — the building of the railroads in the
American West of the 1860s. All is worth it, unlikely as
that sounds, and Mankell, who specializes in an urbane,
understated portent, makes it work.
Against
this vast, varied tapestry, the main cast is small. We
meet
Birgitta Roslin
, a local judge swept up, by the merest link, in the
crimes that spur the tale. In her 50s, introspective,
emotionally involved in her cases, she worries over the
light gone from her marriage. Timid and plucky by turns,
she has a detective's mind and a gentle persistence. She
never does anything remotely superhuman; instead, she's
on the phone a lot. Her foibles make her believably
human.
Birgitta
is not the main character. That would be the man from
Beijing
himself, Ya Ru. He belongs to a family with ties to the
older Communist hierarchy. Ya Ru himself, he's one bad
capitalist. He has made billions through business deals,
graft, and power brokerage, and for well and ill, he
represents the coming
China
.
In his
office towering high in the center of town, Ya Ru has a
muscular splendor, searing foresight, an iron memory,
and an ancient grudge. He also has an unshakable vision
of a capitalist
China
in full roar, one he will profit from and help drive;
for him, the socialist past is moribund. He's also a
corrupt psychopath ready to do anything to get what he
wants.
His
sister is
Hong Qui
, as rigidly committed to the socialist past as her
brother is to the capitalist future. Brother and sister
have an icy war of words; their facedowns feel like fate
itself, the conversation of present with past.
Hong will
surprise us, for, amid her merciless devotion, she shows
a rich inner life. By crazy-quilted circumstances, she
becomes friends with Birgitta, who has traveled to
Beijing
with her friend
Karin
. From then on, an informal network of female friends
faces off against a towering, male-dominated
bureaucracy.
Birgitta
and the Chinese siblings have family ties back to the
racist enslavement of Chinese workers in building the
American railroads. We meet
Wang San
and his brothers, kidnapped in
Canton
and forced into killing servitude on the rails. Their
sufferings stand for the sick way the West came to
dominance in the world. They are why, as Mankell writes,
"Ya Ru hated everything English."
I am
forced to say that the central vengeance in the novel
seems somewhat improbable to me. And a few set-speeches
strike me as somewhat textbooky. These flaws almost
don't matter. As Birgitta realizes, this story is bigger
than anyone in it (as all come to see): It's the
turbulent sweep of time itself, geopolitics transforming
the world at a scale that defeats the mind. Each
character is right; each is wrong. Each is momentarily
in control; all are deceived.
Throughout
this remarkable work, Birgitta walks streets, of Swedish
hamlets, of Helsingborg,
London
,
Beijing
, curious, driven, and fearful, sensing all that is
beyond her. The deep past has us in its grip, and so
does the inevitable yet-to-happen — the future we
bring closer with our every step. In its appalling,
invigorating sweep,
Henning Mankell's
"The Man From Beijing" is flavored with the
grating tang of time's passage itself.
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