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A review by paulfrankh
Quicksand: What It Means to Be a Human Being by Henning Mankell
5.0
Henning Mankell was one of those authors of whom I can always remember being aware-of as an adult but he is not one whose work I had ever read up until Quicksand. I appreciate that this is not just his final work but is also not the type of writing which made him so famous. The Wallander books have become a permanent fixture in charity and second-hand bookshops and I have thought to myself on more than one occasion that I should probably read them.
Quicksand is something else entirely. It is a book that is made up of the kind of writing to which I aspire. It is a testament to the skill of both Mankell and Laurie Thompson, the books translator. It is worthwhile noting here that this was the final piece of work for Thompson who died a few months before Mankell in June 2015 (Mankell died in October). Thompson had translated several of Mankell's previous works and that relationship between author and translator comes across here. The phrase 'poetic prose' doesn't quite do justice to the lucidity of the scenes and landscapes through which Mankell takes us.
Less a straightforward biography and rather an assemblage of vignettes of a life that has been lived to it's fullest potential. What Mankell created in Quicksand is a book that deserves, that requires, rereading.
It is perhaps best surmised as a stream of consciousness on the human condition. But one that is completely discernible and where every detail has been carefully considered. There are plenty of books on the subject of death, of the prospect of life after death and of the existential crisis that thinking about such things can so often cause.
Mankell places his own life in the context of human history and of the history of the world. He looks back 40,000 years to cave paintings and forwards 100,000 years to when the nuclear waste buried in the side of a Swedish mountain will cease to be dangerous. In doing so he exposes the absurdity of thinking in such numbers; Mankell died aged 67 yet in that time he experienced a great deal. It has been 1,600 generations of human beings since the cave paintings and it will be 4,000 before the nuclear waste finally becomes benign.
When the average person lives to see 2 or 3 generations come after them; it becomes possible to argue that 100,000 years may as well be an infinity. The actions that we take now will last forever. The global population is now growing faster than ever before; as there are more of us alive they are more options for people with whom we can procreate. Quicksand highlights that whilst each and every person experiences life in their own individual way; hundreds of millions of years of life all being lived out at once. Separated by the smallest choices and coincidences but always living in the shadow of our ancestors.
The decisions we make now will reverberate throughout the rest of time; where we go, who we meet, what we eat. Our fascination which the movements of historical figures is enough to tell us that in a millennium our actions will be picked over, scrunitinised, our mis-steps criticised and our barbarisms analysed. I wonder now what Mankell would have made of Donald Trump being the presumptive nominee for the Republican Presidential Candidate; a man whose policies consist largely of propositions for building concrete borders and oversimplifications of complex economic issues. A complete disenfranchisement with the notion of realpolitik and a descent into ideological ramblings built on sand.
The paradox of this book is that it shows just how much can be achieved in a short space of time, and yet how ultimately irrelevant it actually becomes. When entire civilisations vanish from history, countless lives lost to fruitless and aimless combat, the question of what it means to be human being becomes ever more pertinent.
What is the value in the endless stream of digital collages that so many of us now create? We have already seen how entire sites can disappear in a second, the virtual spaces that so many teenagers poured their lives into ten years ago has now vanished entirely. We create and share more now that we ever did before - yet we care less and less about what others are making. Focusing only on writing our our legends into strings of binary that can (and likely will) be erased at the click of button. What then, does it mean to be a human being in 2016?
Quicksand does not provide us with a definitive answer, but it does at least give cause for it's reader to question where they stand on the timeline of history and what will be left of them once they too have passed on.
Quicksand is something else entirely. It is a book that is made up of the kind of writing to which I aspire. It is a testament to the skill of both Mankell and Laurie Thompson, the books translator. It is worthwhile noting here that this was the final piece of work for Thompson who died a few months before Mankell in June 2015 (Mankell died in October). Thompson had translated several of Mankell's previous works and that relationship between author and translator comes across here. The phrase 'poetic prose' doesn't quite do justice to the lucidity of the scenes and landscapes through which Mankell takes us.
Less a straightforward biography and rather an assemblage of vignettes of a life that has been lived to it's fullest potential. What Mankell created in Quicksand is a book that deserves, that requires, rereading.
It is perhaps best surmised as a stream of consciousness on the human condition. But one that is completely discernible and where every detail has been carefully considered. There are plenty of books on the subject of death, of the prospect of life after death and of the existential crisis that thinking about such things can so often cause.
Mankell places his own life in the context of human history and of the history of the world. He looks back 40,000 years to cave paintings and forwards 100,000 years to when the nuclear waste buried in the side of a Swedish mountain will cease to be dangerous. In doing so he exposes the absurdity of thinking in such numbers; Mankell died aged 67 yet in that time he experienced a great deal. It has been 1,600 generations of human beings since the cave paintings and it will be 4,000 before the nuclear waste finally becomes benign.
When the average person lives to see 2 or 3 generations come after them; it becomes possible to argue that 100,000 years may as well be an infinity. The actions that we take now will last forever. The global population is now growing faster than ever before; as there are more of us alive they are more options for people with whom we can procreate. Quicksand highlights that whilst each and every person experiences life in their own individual way; hundreds of millions of years of life all being lived out at once. Separated by the smallest choices and coincidences but always living in the shadow of our ancestors.
The decisions we make now will reverberate throughout the rest of time; where we go, who we meet, what we eat. Our fascination which the movements of historical figures is enough to tell us that in a millennium our actions will be picked over, scrunitinised, our mis-steps criticised and our barbarisms analysed. I wonder now what Mankell would have made of Donald Trump being the presumptive nominee for the Republican Presidential Candidate; a man whose policies consist largely of propositions for building concrete borders and oversimplifications of complex economic issues. A complete disenfranchisement with the notion of realpolitik and a descent into ideological ramblings built on sand.
The paradox of this book is that it shows just how much can be achieved in a short space of time, and yet how ultimately irrelevant it actually becomes. When entire civilisations vanish from history, countless lives lost to fruitless and aimless combat, the question of what it means to be human being becomes ever more pertinent.
What is the value in the endless stream of digital collages that so many of us now create? We have already seen how entire sites can disappear in a second, the virtual spaces that so many teenagers poured their lives into ten years ago has now vanished entirely. We create and share more now that we ever did before - yet we care less and less about what others are making. Focusing only on writing our our legends into strings of binary that can (and likely will) be erased at the click of button. What then, does it mean to be a human being in 2016?
Quicksand does not provide us with a definitive answer, but it does at least give cause for it's reader to question where they stand on the timeline of history and what will be left of them once they too have passed on.