Who stole Henning Mankell´s socks ?
The world-famous Swedish story-teller
Henning Mankell, whose detective stories
have had great success also in
claims that an
stolen his socks when he was retained
by the IDF upon his forced arrival in
**
In a two-page spread in the large Swedish
daily Dagens Nyheter on Saturday June 5
he describes his ordeal written in the style
of one of his exciting criminal novels.
Towards the end he says that ”the myth
of the courageous and also infallible Israeli
soldier has been crushed. Now one can add
that they also are simple thieves”.
**
There may be at least three other
explanations why Mankell lost his socks.
Someone may have taken them as a souvenir.
What a conversation piece: the socks of
famous criminal writer Mankell. Although after
having been in use for six days, they might
have to be embedded behind glass or in plastics.
**
Another explanation is that the well-used
socks were taken away in the mistaken
belief that they were some chemical weapon.
**
A third explanation could be that one of the
female soldiers who met Mankell wanted to
wash them for him but then could not return
them to him before his forced departure
back to
He got a new pair by the Lufthansa stewardess.
Who knows who the villain was until the last
chapter?
**
Mankell makes the following remark upon
meeting a couple of girls among the soldiers:
“Maybe they are such who will escape to
service is over? It happens all the time.”
He also says that he considers halting
any further translations of his books into
Hebrew. How much has he earned so far
in royalties in the country that he despises
so openly?
Franz T. Cohn
