Kennedy’s Brain

A Novel

Henning Mankell

Translated by Laurie Thompson

hardcover

$26.95

Henning Mankell, the acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, has put his unmistakable stamp on this gripping new thriller.

Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her son kept a secret apartment; Sydney, Australia, to find Aron, her estranged ex-husband and Henrik’s father; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns the awful truth behind an AIDS hospice. Her investigation reveals how much her son concealed from her as she uncovers the links between his death, the African AIDS epidemic, and Western pharmaceutical interests, while those who dare help her are killed off.

In the tradition of John le Carré’s The Constant Gardener, Kennedy’s Brain was inspired by Mankell’s anger at ongoing inequities that permit a few people to have unprecedented power over the many poor Africans who have none. Already a bestseller in Europe, Kennedy’s Brain is both a thrilling page-turner and a damning indictment of inhuman greed in the face of the African AIDS crisis.

Henning Mankell’s books have been published in thirty-six countries with over 25 million copies in print worldwide. A three-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize, he divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique. Laurie Thompson, the former editor of the Swedish Book Review, has translated more than forty books from the Swedish, including seven by Henning Mankell. He lives in rural Wales.