Book description
The problem of Aids has been kept largely under control in Europe,
but in the Third World it is a different story. There is a devestating
lack of resources for medicine and for education. When parents die at
a young age, children are left behind with no-one to teach them how to
avoid the same fate, and so the cycle continues.
Memory Books could prove to be the most important documents in our
time in answer to this crisis. When the official reports have been
filed away, these slim volumes, memories recorded by those who died
too soon, will remain. Through a combination of words and drawings,
they can have a legacy, a hope that future generations may not suffer
the same heartbreaking fate.
Henning Mankell is not a public figure in the way politicians are,
but he has achieved cult success with his Kurt Wallander novels and is
noted for the social and moral questions raised by his fiction. He
devotes much of his time to work with Aids charities.
I Die But the Memory Lives on is a fable illustrating the
importance of books as a means of education, of preserving memories
and of sharing life. In the midst of death and suffering, a young girl
plants a tree. She nurtures it as a fragment of life that will grow
and survive and, like the Memory Books, outlive this global crisis.
Mankell, by highlighting and humanising this catastrophe, proposes a
way to help.
Henning Mankell has become a worldwide phenomenon with his crime
writing, gripping thrillers and atmospheric novels set in Africa. His
prizewinning and critically acclaimed Inspector Wallander Mysteries are
currently dominating bestseller lists all over the globe. His books have
been translated into over forty languages and made into numerous
international film and television adaptations: most recently the
BAFTA-award-winning BBC television series
Wallander
, starring Kenneth Branagh. Mankell devotes much of his free time to
working with Aids charities in Africa, where he is also director of the
Teatro Avenida in Maputo. In 2008, the University of St Andrews
conferred Henning Mankell with an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters
in recognition of his major contribution to literature and to the
practical exercise of conscience.
