A touching story of growing up and discovering what really matters. Joel makes three New Year’s resolutions: To see a naked lady, to toughen himself up so that he can live to be, to see the sea. How he sets out to fulfil these is a moving story of self-discovery.
Joel is growing up. He is getting interested in girls. They all look pretty impossible for a motherless boy in Northern Sweden. Especially as his sailor dad is keen to drown his sadness in drink, and all the local matrons are watching the pair of them. And then he saves old Simon from a frozen death in the woods, and Joel becomes a local hero.
Henning Mankell was born in Stockholm in 1948. He is the prize-winning author of the eight novels in the Inspector Wallander Series which has been translated into many languages and consistently tops the best-seller lists throughout Europe. His novel Sidetracked won the CWA Gold dagger in 2001. Mankell has worked as an actor, theatre director and manager in Sweden and in Mozambique, where he is head of Teatro Avenida in Maputo. He died in October 2015.