A Treacherous Paradise

Afterword

As a general rule, everything I write is based on truth — it might be a big or a small truth, it can be crystal clear or extremely fragmentary; but nevertheless, there is always something based on real events that leads to the fiction in all my novels.

As in this particular case. It was Tor Sällström, author and Africa enthusiast, who mentioned in a conversation, almost in passing, some remarkable documents he had come across in old colonial archives in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. According to what he read, at the end of the nineteenth century and perhaps also the beginning of the twentieth century, a Swedish woman had been the owner of one of the biggest brothels in the town, which in those days was called Lourenço Marques. She was mentioned because she had been a significant taxpayer.

After a few years, she is no longer mentioned in the documents. She apparently came from nowhere, and vanished just as mysteriously as she had appeared.

Who was she? Where did she come from? I did more research, but it seems her origins really were unknown, as was her fate. All conclusions had to be theories, more or less probable.

But we do know that Swedish ships berthed in Lourenço Marques, often carrying cargoes of timber to Australia. And most probably there were women crew members now and then, mainly cooks.

In other words, everything beyond those basic facts is speculation. Apart from the bureaucratic evidence in an old ledger. When it came to taxes gathered, colonial civil servants were scrupulous with the facts. Every year it was necessary to convince the government in Lisbon that the colony really was a profit-making venture.

So, she really did exist and lived in Lourenço Marques, because the archives do not lie. She paid impressive amounts of tax.

My story is therefore based on the little we know, and all that we don’t know.

Henning Mankell

Gothenburg, June 2011