
A Treacherous Paradise
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Narrated by:
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Rosalyn Landor
About this listen
From the internationally acclaimed author of the Wallander crime series, a dramatic new stand-alone novel set in turn-of-the-century Sweden and Mozambique, whose indomitable female protagonist is awoken from naïveté by her exposure to racism and by her own unexpected inner strengths.
Cold and poverty define Hanna Renström's childhood in remote northern Sweden, and in 1905, at nineteen, she boards a ship for Australia in hope of a better life. But none of her hopes - or fears - prepares her for the life she will lead. After two brief marriages, she finds herself a widow twice over, and the owner of a bordello in Portuguese East Africa, a world where colonialism and white supremacy rule, where she is isolated within society by her profession and her sex, and, among the bordello's black prostitutes, by her color. As Hanna's story unfurls over the next several years, we watch her in this "treacherous paradise," as she wrestles with a constant, wrenching loneliness and with the racism she's meant to unthinkingly adopt. And as her life becomes increasingly intertwined with the prostitutes, she moves inexorably toward the moment when she will make a decision that defies every expectation society has of her, and, more important, those she has of herself.
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Wonderful English translation.
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Not sure what I listened to
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Overall
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Hans Olofson arrives in Zambia not long after independence, hoping to fulfill the missionary dream of his friend Janice. He is also fleeing the traumas of his motherless childhood: his father's alcoholism, his best friend's terrible accident, Janice's death, his fear of an ordinary and stifled fate. Africa is a terrible shock, yet he stays and makes it his home. But he never fully comes to understand his place as a mzungu, a wealthy white man among native blacks, and the fragile truce between them.
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Wonderful English translation.
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It was a crime of senseless violence. On a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse, an elderly farmer was bludgeoned to death, his wife left to die with a noose around her neck. As if this didn't present enough problems for Ystad police inspector Kurt Wallander, the dying woman's last word, his only tangible clue, were foreign. If publicized, they could be the match that would inflame Sweden's already smoldering anti-immigrant sentiments.
-
-
A new favorite detective series!
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By: Henning Mankell, and others
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Depths
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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October, 1914. Swedish naval officer Lars Tobiasson-Svartman is charged with a secret mission to take depth readings around the Stockholm archipelago. In the course of his work, he lands on the rocky isle of Halsskär. It seems utterly inhabitable, yet Halsskär is home to the young widow Sara Fredrika. Lars soon learns that Sara, living in near-total isolation, is unaware that the world is at war.
-
-
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What listeners say about A Treacherous Paradise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Josette Luvmour
- 06-12-16
Fanrastic!
Interesting and complex story. Fresh, alive, and not predictable. Mankell never disappoints with an existential realization hidden in story form.
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