Author In memoriam

Henning Mankell

Q: What should I read first by Henning Mankell?

Start with the Joel Gustafson series, since it is the first on file, then read it in publication order.

Henning Mankell has 31 known credited books (31 published) across 3 series. Start with Joel Gustafson.

Henning Mankell was a Swedish author widely credited as one of the founding figures of the Scandinavian noir crime wave that reshaped international crime fiction from the 1990s onward. He is best known for the Kurt Wallander series, following a melancholic, overworked police detective in the small city of Ystad as he investigates crimes that repeatedly expose deeper fractures in Swedish society, from racism and organized crime to the strains of the modern welfare state. Beginning with Faceless Killers in 1991, the series ran to twelve novels and helped establish the genre's now-familiar template of a flawed, humane detective as a lens for social critique, directly influencing the wave of Scandinavian crime writers who followed. Mankell divided his time between Sweden and Mozambique for much of his adult life and was also a committed political activist and playwright, running a theatre in Maputo and remaining outspoken on humanitarian causes, including joining the 2010 Gaza flotilla. Wallander was adapted into two separate acclaimed television series, a Swedish-language production and a BBC series starring Kenneth Branagh. New readers should start with Faceless Killers to meet Wallander from the beginning. Mankell died in 2015 of cancer, having written the final Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, a few years earlier.

Series: 3
Credited books: 31
Published: 31
Latest published book: After the Fire 2015
Active: 1973–2015
Best known for: Joel Gustafson

Key facts about Henning Mankell

Henning Mankell has 31 books on our list. 18 of them belong to a series, while 13 stand alone. Since all 31 are out now, every book here is ready to read. Their series sit on our young adult and nordic noir shelves.

Henning Mankell has 3 series on file. Joel Gustafson has 4 books, while Kurt Wallander has 11 books. Sofia has 3 books, starting in 1995. In particular, Kurt Wallander is the longest series on file.

Joel Gustafson starts with A Bridge to the Stars, while Kurt Wallander starts with Faceless Killers. Sofia starts with Secrets in the Fire.

Since Joel Gustafson is the first series on file, it is the place to start. Their first published book on file came out in 1973. Meanwhile, After the Fire is the latest published book, out in 2015.

There are also 13 standalone books. You can read them in any order, since each one stands alone. The newest one that is out is After the Fire, from 2015. The oldest on file is The Rock Blaster, from 1973.