Tiina Nunnally is making a splash in Anglophone literary circles with her 2006 translation of Henning Mankell’s gripping novel Chronicler of the Winds. Readers familiar with Mankell for his internationally acclaimed series of mystery novels will discover a new and more personal side of the Swedish novelist/playwright in Nunnally’s vibrant translation this beautifully written narrative.
In a departure from his glamorous treatments of Scandinavian characters and settings, Mankell uses Chronicler of the Winds to transport his readers into the world of destitute urban poverty.
For the past 20 years, Mankell has split his time between Sweden and Mozambique, where he runs the country’s only theatre company. After years of living amidst the anonymous masses of urban poor, he one day decided to codify his reflections on Africa into a story—a story that later became Chronicler of the Winds.
Told through the eyes of a formerly employed baker-turned-beggar, the novel recounts the story of a 10-year-old orphan boy named Nelio. One night the narrator finds Neelio lying in a pool of his own blood upon the stage of the bakery/theatre complex where he works. Not knowing what to do, he follows the suffering boy’s instructions and takes him up to the rooftop for some fresh air. He proceeds to spend the next nine nights on that rooftop listening as Nelio cathartically recounts his life story while preparing to die.
In depicting the development of an unbreakable bond between the two characters, Mankell illustrates the immeasurable power of words to shape the human experience. Despite the brevity of his time on the rooftop, Nelio eternally links the narrator to himself by the simple means of a story.
We learn that Nelio, like many urban vagrants in Africa, began his life in the peaceful calm of a rural village. One day, a gang of political “liberators” entered the village and brutally massacred his family and friends before his eyes. After escaping the attack, Nelio finds his way to the capital where he takes up residence inside a hollowed-out equestrian statue. To overcome his loneliness, he joins a rag-tag gang of “street kids” and quickly emerges as their sanctified leader by showing them that despite the extremity of their destitution, human life calls on them to do more than just survive.
Ostensibly, Chronicler of the Winds is an insight into the lives of the millions of suffering slum dwellers who silently inhabit the third world. However, the story transcends its setting to touchingly evoke a number of universal themes.
Mankell begins the novel with an epigram that wisdom preceded and underlies all that exists. Over the course of the novel, he makes readers marvel at Nelio and the prodigious wisdom he gathers during his short life. Readers cannot help but sense that Mankell’s “street kids” actually do reap some good from their suffering.
Like the one boy who lines his pockets with dirt so that plants might grow from within them, the street kids recognize their ability and obligation to create from within themselves. In a world where people live to forget their misery, storytelling and imagination become man’s greatest weapon against an evil seeking to reduce the meaning of life to mere survival. By illustrating this lesson, Chronicler of the Winds conveys a universal message that resonates with people worldwide.
