Henning Mankell
From the internationally acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander crime novels, a powerful stand-alone novel set in early-twentieth-century Sweden and Mozambique, whose vividly drawn female protagonist is awoken from her naÃ¯vetÃ© by her exposure to racism and by her own unexpected inner strengths. , Cold and poverty define Hanna RenstrÃ¶mâ€™s childhood in remote northern Sweden, and in 1904, at nineteen, she boards a ship for Australia in hope of a better life.Â  But none of her hopesâ€”or fearsâ€”prepares her for the life she will lead. After two brief marriages both leave her widowed, she finds herself the owner of a bordello in Portuguese East Africa, a world where colonialism and white colonists rule, where she is isolated within white society by her profession and her gender, and, among the bordelloâ€™s black prostitutes, by her color. As Hannaâ€™s story unfurls over the next several years in this â€œtreacherous paradise,â€ she wrestles with a devastating loneliness and with the racism sheâ€™s meant to unthinkingly adopt. And as her life becomes increasingly intertwined with the prostitutesâ€™, she moves inexorably toward the moment when she will make a decision that defies all the expectations society has of her and, more important, those she has of herself. , Gripping in its drama, evocative and searing in its portrait of colonial Africa, ,A Treacherous Paradise, is, at its heart, a deeply moving story of a woman who manages to wrench wisdom, empathy, and grace from the most unforgiving circumstances.Â 
Fiction,Historical,Historical Fiction,Cultural,Africa,Mystery,Cultural,Sweden,Historical,European Literature,Scandinavian Literature,European Literature,Swedish Literature,Thriller,Mystery Thriller,Audiobook
A Treacherous Paradise