He is self-contained and introspective, but his world changes when his house burns down one night. Welin lives alone on his small island off the coast of Sweden, his only regular visitor the postman Jansson. That earlier novel dealt with ageing and mortality, themes also central to this work. Henning Mankell, in his final novel, returns to the location of a previous book, Italian Shoes, and the same protagonist, retired orthopaedic surgeon Fredrik Welin. From Treasure Island to Lord of the Flies, they explore us as much as we explore them. Islands have a long association with literature, providing a setting for adventure, rebirth and danger. Muriel Spark played with this notion in her early novel, Robinson, where a human-shaped island begins to affect a group of castaways stranded there. “No man is an island”, the poet John Donne announced.
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