Minnet av en smutsig ängel

2011 I fell in love with this guy who recommended this book. I have been trying to read it ever since. Now I finally managed to finish it.

It's OK... I don't quite like Henning Mankell's writing style. He's great in that he writes about things he knows about. He's lived in Africa. Now, he writes about a woman 100 years ago, so it's not about his own experience in that way, but I can imagine his description of things that haven't changed is correct. It sounds true. I have never been to Africa.

This is a story of a Swedish girl, Hanna, who was sent to work in the big town, got a job as a cook on a ship that was sailing to Australia, got married to a sailor, who died, and she jumped the ship in an African town, sick and pregnant. She got a room in a hotel and the ladies working there took care of her. It turned out it was not a real hotel, it was a brothel, they called a hotel, to make it look respectable. The brothel owner decided to marry the pretty Swedish girl, and soon after the wedding he died. So, now we have this young Swedish woman, twice widowed, owning a brothel in Africa, and being a very, very, very rich woman he writes a diary and thinking about the differences of Africans and Europeans, of racism, of attitudes. She is becoming a racist and doesn't understand how that could happen.
Her husband told her to find advice from a very successful Portuguese man, if she ever needs any, and she goes to him. He is married to a black woman, and they have two children. This black woman doesn't behave like other black women Hanna knows. She behaves as if she was an equal. This shakes Hanna from her budding racism back to who and what she was.

I have difficulties understanding what Henning Mankell understood and is trying to tell me with this book, because of my European mindset. I suppose I need to read more African literature. There is this certain... acceptance I don't understand. The rules of interaction, kindness, and friendliness, are not the same as I'm used to. I suppose Henning managed to convey that confusion very well :-D