The Madman by Henning Mankell
Henning Mankell was a Swedish novelist, dramatist, and screenwriter, who died in 2015. A central figure of Scandinavian noir, he is most famous for the hugely successful Wallander series, which sold millions of copies round the world and spawned multiple film and television adaptions. An active left-wing social critic and activist, Mankell’s political views inform his writing’s preoccupation with social inequality and injustice. The Madman, which is described as a ‘rediscovered classic,’ is due for English-language publication on the 16th of July, 2026.
The Madman
The Madman is set in Post-Second World War Sweden. It revolves around Bertil Kras, the ‘madman’ of the tale, who decides to leave his life as a bicycle courier in Stockholm to take a job in a small town in the north of the country. The townsfolk there live in the shadow of the war, during which an internment camp was built in the forest for the communist ‘unreliables.’ It is a community where the most prominent citizens are Nazi sympathisers: ‘When Bertil Kras finds himself standing hungry and lonely in the street of the market town that Sunday in September 1947, a great deal has already happened. Just one example: five years earlier, several of his future tormentors have sent shiny, polished reindeer horns to the German embassy with discreet good wishes.’
Though a hard worker, Kras is not accepted. His political views make him suspect and he fails to integrate. When the sawmill burns down in mysterious circumstances, Bertil becomes the perfect scapegoat for the town.
The structure of The Madman is interesting. We already know it details the downfall of Kras, an outsider in the close-knit market town. As we are told in the early pages ‘The story is simple. It’s the story of those who batter him to pieces.’ We know the persecution he receives from the locals will lead inexorably to a key scene in the marshalling yard, where his madness will be irrefutable. The focus of the novel is not on what happened then, but on why. And, as we as readers work through the mystery, so does Kras, who determines to make sense of it, once and for all.
Chance or Fate?
He questions whether it was chance or fate that caused his misery. He remembers the series of incidents that brought him to the town: the bicycle accident that led him to the doctor’s office, where he reads a magazine article about work in the sawmills in the North. But he also remembers his own choices: to get out of Stockholm, to ignore the repeated warnings to leave town, and ultimately, his decision to make sense of his persecution by becoming the person they always thought he was.
A piercing analysis of how truth can be manipulated in the service of power, The Madman offers a gloomy perspective on the possibility of ever achieving social justice.
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