During his stay in Norway, he got in contact with the Norwegian Workers' Communist Party and took an active part in their actions. Furthermore, he got involved with the society Folket i Bild/Kulturfront which focused on cultural policy studies. Mankell participated in the Protests of 1968 in Sweden, protesting among other things, the Vietnam War, the Portuguese Colonial War and the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Mankell pitched the project to Sveriges Television and will include international co-producers/financiers. Mankell is set to work on a screenplay for Sveriges Television about his father-in-law, the famous movie and theatre director Ingmar Bergman during 2010 and the series will be produced in four one-hour episodes. The episodes will be broadcast in Germany in 2010. Actor Axel Milberg, who portrays Inspector Klaus Borowski, had asked Mankell to contribute to the show as the two were promoting The Chinaman audio book, a project that Milberg had worked on.

Mankell developed two original stories for the German police series Tatort. Mankell has said he's giving away half of his income to charity causes. Mankell recently donated 15 million Swedish kronor to SOS Children's Villages for a village for homeless children in Mozambique. On 12 June 2008 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is married to Eva Bergman, daughter of Ingmar Bergman. Recently he built up his own publishing house (Leopard Förlag) in order to support young talents from Africa and Sweden. He now spends at least half the year in Maputo working with the theatre and writing. Mankell took part in the party's activities but never himself joined the party.Īfter living in Zambia and other African countries, Henning Mankell was invited to become the artistic director of Teatro Avenida in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. In the 1970s Mankell moved from Sweden to Norway and lived with a Norwegian woman who was a member of the Maoist Communist Labor Party of Norway. In his youth Mankell was a left-wing political activist and a strong opponent of the Vietnam War, South African apartheid and Portugal's colonial war in Mozambique.

In the following years he collaborated with several theaters in Sweden. At the age of 20 he already started a career as author and assistant director at the Riks Theater in Stockholm. Mankell's father, Ivar, was a judge and his grandfather, also called Henning Mankell (1868-1930), was a composer. Mankell was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and grew up in Sveg (Härjedalen) and Borås (Västergötland).

Asesinos sin rostro by Henning Mankell