After the Fire

Fredrik Welin is a retired surgeon who left his profession in disgrace many years ago and now lives alone on a small island off the Swedish coast, the only person who stays there. His daughter lives elsewhere and he seldom sees her. The nearest thing he has to a friend is Jansson, the mailman, who is also something of a rival. Fredrik wants nothing more than to see out his days in peace.

That peace ends one autumn night when a blinding light wakes him and he finds his house in flames. He gets out in time with Jansson's help, though he is wearing two left boots. By morning everything he owned has burned to ash, and he has to make do in an abandoned trailer on the island. The police take an interest in him, since he stands to collect a large insurance payout, and they begin to suspect he set the fire himself.

The disaster also draws other people toward him. Lisa Modin, a local journalist who wants to write about the fire, stirs feelings in Fredrik that he assumed had died long ago. His daughter then arrives with news of her own. When another house in the archipelago burns while Fredrik is away, the community realizes that an arsonist is among them.

This was Henning Mankell's final novel, and it is a quiet, close study of an old recluse who has to let the world back in after losing everything he had shut himself away with.