The chronicler of the winds

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The chronicler of the winds (original title: Comédia infantil ) is a novel by Henning Mankell about the contemporary history of a former colony in Africa from the perspective of a child. The book was published in 1995 by Ordfront Verlag, Stockholm. In 2000 the German edition was published in the translation by Verena Reichel by Paul Zsolnay Verlag .

action

One night the baker José Antonio Maria Vaz heard gunshots from the theater next to the bakery where he worked. There he found the ten-year-old street boy Nelio with a serious gunshot wound in the chest, hid him on the roof of the bakery and cared for him there for nine days and nights. During the day Nelio sleeps, during the nine nights he tells his story to José:

Nelio comes from a village in the border area of Mozambique . In a cruel attack by civil war - partisan his father and sister are like many residents of the village brutally murdered, the village is burned down, Nelio and his mother are deported with other women and children of the village. In the bandits base camp, Nelio is ordered to shoot another boy from his family. Instead, he shoots one of the bandits, is able to escape and after a long journey finally arrives in the “big city by the sea” (this means Maputo , but in the novel the identity of the city remains open).

Nelio immediately feels at home in the city. At first he is exploited by a crook for pickpockets, but quickly sees through him and leaves him because he wants to live honestly. In an equestrian statue, in which a hatch can be opened below, which gives access to the interior, Nelio sets up night quarters. He soon joins a group of six street children, led by the 14-year-old Cosmos who calls himself a "pack".

The pack becomes Nelio's new family. The children (except for Nelio) sleep outside in cardboard boxes. They live off trash, minor thefts and the little money they earn from small jobs. In such an activity, the children curiously open a rich man's briefcase, but find only a dead lizard in it . You replace the dead animal with a living one and put the suitcase back in its place. This gives them the feeling of power, and so in the near future they will break into various buildings from the department store to the presidential palace. However, they do not steal or destroy anything, they only leave behind enigmatic traces: a staged disorder and a dead lizard as their symbol. They celebrate the birthday of the youngest member of the pack, Alfredo Bomba, in the house of a development worker who has been away, help themselves abundantly at the refrigerator and, for once, spend the night under one roof, but do no further damage here either.

When Cosmos leaves the group, Nelio is accepted by everyone as the new leader because of his level-headed character. He is known and respected in the city as the only street boy who has never been beaten. But over time, Nelio changes. He becomes brooding, quick-tempered, and impatient. Thoughts about the fate of his family and about death torment him and cannot be driven away by the fact that he fulfills wishes and brings joy to the other children. His constant contact with misery and injustice arouse existential questions in him. He wants to understand the world, but his attempts to find answers with the help of an old atlas and an Indian photographer who is said to be well versed in such questions fail.

Shortly afterwards, Alfredo Bomba becomes terminally ill. In order to take away his fear of dying, Nelio works with the entire pack on a play, a journey to an "island without fear" longed for by Alfredo Bomba. Towards the end of the performance in the city theater, Alfredo falls asleep smiling forever, but the security guards of the theater have noticed the intruders. Nelio, who does not want to leave Alfredo's body alone, is shot in the chest with which he is found by José Antonio Maria Vaz. When Nelio finished telling his story nine days later, he died. His pack dissolves.

José then gave up his job as a baker. He leaves his great love and his brother's family, because from now on he sees his only life's work as “chronicler of the winds” in telling Nelio's story, which he has given him and which is not allowed to die.

Awards

The chronicler of the winds was nominated in 1995 for the August Prize and the Literature Prize of the Nordic Council . In 1996 the book was by the Swedish radio station SR P1 with the Novel Prize of the Swedish Radio Award.

filming

A film adaptation of Comédia Infantil was made in Maputo under the direction of Solveig Nordlund , which was nominated in the 1998 International Film Festival Rotterdam for a Tiger Award and in 1999 for a Guldbagge in the category Best Director .

expenditure

  • Henning Mankell: The chronicler of the winds . New edition. German Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-21003-4

literature

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