Depths (novel)

Depths (Djup in the original Swedish) is a 2004 novel by Swedish writer Henning Mankell.[1]

Depths
First edition
AuthorHenning Mankell
Original titleDjup
TranslatorLaurie Thompson
CountrySweden
LanguageSwedish
GenreGenre fiction
PublisherLeopard Förlag (Swedish)
Harvill Secker (English)
Publication date
2004
Published in English
2006
Media typePrint (Hardcover, Paperback)
ISBN1-84343-263-3 (Eng. trans.)
OCLC67375286

Plot

Ever since his childhood Svartman has been obsessed by exactness in the measurement of time or distance. He seeks solace through secretly observing or following people, and at night overcomes fear by cradling his most precious possession, his sounding lead. Svartman's obsessions and growing distrust of others leads him to submerge himself in a web of deceit involving his employer, Kristina and Sara which increasingly threatens to engulf him.

Repection

Writing in The New York Times, Lucy Ellmann criticised the novel's style, deprecating Mankell's writing as "woolly" and "staccato" and his use of metaphor and symbolism as overwrought.[2] For The Guardian, Ian Thomson also criticised the writing as staccato and pretentious, but was more positive about the novel as a whole, praising the evocation of the Baltic seascape and the novel's "old-fashioned moral force".[1] Paul Binding's review for The Independent mostly described the book's plot, but was uniformly positive about its narrative force.[3]

gollark: Not *all* of it.
gollark: TJ09 works in mysterious, changelogless, closed-source, no-testing ways.
gollark: @TJ09 is it?
gollark: Are there females *at all*?
gollark: Clearly a feature.

References
  1. Thomson, Ian (2006-11-11). "Review: Depths by Henning Mankell". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  2. Ellmann, Lucy (15 April 2007). "Under the Sea". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
  3. "Depths, by Henning Mankell trans Laurie Thompson". The Independent. 6 October 2006.
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