After the Fire

By: Henning Mankell, Marlaine Delargy - translator

Narrated by: Sean Barrett

Henning Mankell's last novel, about an aging man whose quiet, solitary life on an isolated island off the coast of Sweden is turned upside down when his house catches fire.

Fredrik Welin is a former surgeon who retired in disgrace decades earlier to a tiny island on which he is the only resident. He has a daughter he rarely sees and his mailman Jansson is the closest thing he has to a friend, and to an adversary. He is perfectly content to live out his days in quiet solitude.

One autumn evening, he is startled awake by a blinding light--only to discover that his house is on fire. With the help of Jansson, he escapes the flames just in time wearing two left boots. Dawn reveals that everything he owns is now a smoldering pile of ash and his house is destroyed--forcing him to move into an abandoned trailer on his island. A local journalist, Lisa Modin, who wants to write a story about the fire, comes into his life. In doing so, she awakens in him something that he thought was long dead. Soon after, his daughter comes to the island with surprising news of her own. Meanwhile, the police suspect Fredrik of arson because he had a sizable insurance claim on his house. When Fredrik is away from the archipelago, another house goes up in flames and the community realizes they have an arsonist in their midst. After the Fire is an intimate portrait of an elderly recluse who is forced to open himself up to a world he'd left behind.

A must read if your a fan .

Made so much more poignant by his passing .
It was an uplifting read in the end but mournful at times . Just a warning ,

Mildly interesting but not my favorite

Didn’t really like any of the characters and that makes it hard for me to find the story compelling

An interesting view of life, aging and death

Those looking for a standard Mankell police procedural may be disappointed with this book, may even find it boring, but it is anything but. I replayed so many sections, that I finally bought the book so that I could read as I listened and then reread. I shall not soon forget Fredrik's transition to 'The place where memory is swallowed up by forgetfulness'.

Loved it!

Interesting but unsympathetic protagonist

So much about the protagonist is inexplainable.
The reader starts, as with most novels, feeling sympathetic toward him. But gradually he becomes less and less likable and increasingly mysterious.

It’s a good read. Worth it. Well written. Compelling.

Loved this “memoir” mystery

The book is an interior monologue of a full human being as a mystery unfolds and aging and understanding the past in the present reveal. I wept and said “do not end yet.” I am a 70 plus woman and I looked at my own past with our narrator with a more gentle view.