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ALSO BY HENNING MANKELL

Fiction

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Nonfiction

 ,     

Henning Mankell

I TA L I A N   S H O E S

Translated from the Swedish by

Laurie Thompson

THE NEW PRESS

N E W   YO R K

L O N D O N

©  by Henning Mankell

English translation ©  by Laurie Thompson All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.

Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013.

First published as  Italienska Skor  by Leopard Förlag, Stockholm, 2006

Published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, London, 2009

Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2009

Distributed by Perseus Distribution

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Mankell, Henning, 1948–

[Italienska skor.  English]

Italian shoes / Henning Mankell ; translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson.

p.  cm.

“First published as Italienska Skor by Leopard förlag, Stockholm, 2006. ”

ISBN 978-1-59558-436-6 (alk.  paper)

I.  Title.

PT9876. 23. A49I8313   2009

839.

2008054518

The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry.  The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable.

Composition by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Grangemouth, Stirlingshire This book was set in Minion

Printed in the United States of America

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When the shoe fits, you don’t think about the foot.

Chuang Chou

There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where the opposite is obviously impossible, and deep truths, which are characterised by their opposite also being a deep truth.

Niels Bohr

Love is a gentle hand which slowly pushes fate to one side.

Sigfrid Siwertz

C O N T E N TS

First Movement: Ice

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Second Movement: The Forest

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Third Movement: The Sea

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Fourth Movement: Winter Solstice

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         

I always feel more lonely when it’s cold.

The cold outside my window reminds me of the cold emanating from my own body.  I’m being attacked from two directions.  But I’m constantly resisting.  That’s why I cut a hole in the ice every morning.

If anyone were to stand with a telescope on the ice in the frozen bay and saw what I was doing, he would think that I was crazy and was about to arrange my own death.  A naked man in the freezing cold, with an axe in his hand, opening up a hole in the ice?

I suppose, really, that I hope there will be somebody out there one of these days, a black shadow against all the white – somebody who sees me and wonders if he’d be able to stop me before it was too late.