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Quicksand: What It Means to Be a Human Being Audiobook
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Publisher Description
In January 2014 I was informed that I had cancer. However, Quicksand is not a book about death and destruction, but about what it means to be human. I have undertaken a journey from my childhood to the man I am today, writing about the key events in my life, and about the people who have given me new perspectives. About men and women I have never met, but wish I had. I write about love and jealousy, about courage and fear. And about what it is like to live with a potentially fatal illness. This book is also about why the cave painters 40,000 years ago chose the very darkest places for their fascinating pictures. And about the dreadful troll that we are trying to lock away inside the bedrock of a Swedish mountain for the next 100,000 years. It is a book about how humanity has lived and continues to live, and about how I have lived and continue to live my own life. And, not least, about the great zest for life, which came back when I managed to drag myself out of the quicksand that threatened to suck me down into the abyss.
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“Sean Barrett’s performance…encapsulates the Swedish author’s sense of seriousness and social justice…Barrett’s voice and tone expertly incorporate a vague sense of being European and of language translation. His timing and rhythm are so perfect that we can hear the melancholy and joy that shape Mankell’s reflections…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
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“Surely one of the most moving and intriguing farewell notes ever written…Intensely beautiful in its spirit.”
— Alexander McCall Smith, New York Times bestselling author -
“Quicksand defines life not by its ending but by the creative and humanitarian content that filled—and fulfilled—Mankell’s life.”
— Financial Times (London) -
“An extremely moving swansong…The reader realizes that Mankell has never really been driven by anger but by the tiny, fragile hope that his words and deeds will help in the fight for a fairer world.”
— Independent (London) -
“Quicksand, a hybrid of essay and memoir, reflects knowledgeably on art, religion, childhood, and the ‘final insensibility” that is our dying. Rarely has a writer contemplated the mystery of the end of life with such a wide-ranging curiosity.”
— Evening Standard (London)
Awards
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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About Henning Mankell
Henning Mankell (1948–2015) was Sweden’s most-read author worldwide. His novels, which include the bestselling Kurt Wallander mysteries, have been translated into thirty-seven languages with more than thirty million copies in print worldwide. He has received the Crime Writers’ Association’s Macallan Gold Dagger and the German Tolerance Prize and has been a three-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Book Prize.
About Sean Barrett
Sean Barrett has won over twenty Earphones Awards and two prestigious Audie Awards for his audiobook narrations. He started acting professionally at the age of twelve and has since appeared on television and in film in Minder, Brush Strokes, War and Peace, Sons and Lovers, and Return to Oz. His stage credits include performing in the West End with Noël Coward in his Suite in Three Keys. He has worked extensively on BBC Radio and has also narrated several television series, including People’s Century and Crash.