Henning Mankell

"Deep down he understood his father.  One should stay faithful to one's dreams.  How faithful had he been to his own?"

— Henning Mankell

Swedish Novelist

1948 -

These sentences come from the short story, The Pyramid, by one of my favorite authors, Henning Mankell.  The main character, Kurt Wallander, has flown to Egypt to rescue his father who was jailed for attempting to climb a pyramid.  Climbing the pyramids was his father's dream.  When Wallander sees the pyramids for the first time, he begins to understand what motivates his father.

I bet your parents also had dreams.  Do you know what those dreams were?  Did they achieve them?  I never knew my father's dreams.  My mother wanted to be a school teacher, but her father never let her go to high school.  Parents influence the dreams of their children.  Sometimes parents force their children down paths they don't want to take.  I was fortunate because my parents allowed me to find my own way.  The flip side is also true.  Children can influence and change the dreams of their parents.  

Have you been faithful to your dreams?  Or are you letting them slip away?  Don't give up on your dreams.  Stay focused and dream big.  Some day you too may climb the pyramids.  

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Henning Mankell

"To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child."

Henning Mankell

Swedish Novelist

1948 - 

I watch the three-year-old child that my wife and I are raising and I am amazed at the creative powers of her mind to imagine worlds that I cannot see.  To invent stories and stories within stories.  What happens to us as we grow up and take on the cloaks of the adult world?  Where does our inventiveness go?  What worlds of the imagination have we forgotten?

What do you do to keep your mind young?  Do you play with children?  Do you enter their worlds?  Or does the path you walk become narrower with each passing day?  Do you still think as a child or have you given up childish things?  Are you young at heart?  Or are the arteries of your imagination clogged?

I recently finished Mankell's excellent novel, The Man From Beijing.  Here is a video of Henning Mankell discussing the novel at Strand Bookstore.

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