For Henning Mankell, autumn was the bleak herald of winter and death; for Keats, the mellow fruition of summer. For the believer in a personal God, there is much more to say
In the late Henning Mankell’s The Fifth Woman the troubled and depressive protagonist, Inspector Kurt Wallander, broods over the onset of autumn. “A mouse scurried past his feet and vanished behind an old clothes chest that stood close to the wall. It’s autumn, thought Wallander. The field mice are finding their way into the walls of houses. It will be winter soon.”Gloomy apprehension about the oncoming of the long Nordic winter is a familiar theme in Scandinavian literature, but Wallander’s angst is more than climatic or geographical. The impending bleakness of winter can be seen as a s
29 October 2015, The Tablet
The turning world
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