Best-selling Swedish author Mankell dead at age 67

Henning Mankell, the internationally renowned Swedish crime writer whose books about the gloomy, soul-searching police inspector Kurt Wallander enticed readers around the world, died early Monday, his publisher said. He was 67.

The hesitant figurehead of Scandinavian crime fiction, who last year revealed he had cancer, died in his sleep in the southwestern city of Goteborg, his publisher, Leopard, said in a statement on its website.

Mankell wrote some 50 novels and numerous plays, selling more than 40 million copies worldwide.

Following in the footsteps of the popular 1960s Swedish crime-writing duo of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Mankell’s Wallander series helped define the Scandinavian genre that became known as Nordic noir. Set in the bleak landscapes of southern Sweden, the series drew on the dark, morally complex moods of its main protagonist and was heavily infused with social commentary.

Mankell himself was deeply engaged in social and political issues. Since the mid1980s he had divided his time between Sweden and Mozambique, where he helped build a village for orphaned children to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS. He was also among the activists who were attacked and arrested by Israeli forces as they tried to sail to the Gaza strip with humanitarian supplies in June 2010.

“You have to act, not just by writing but by standing up and doing. For me, you cannot call yourself an intellectual if all you use your intellectual gifts for is to find excuses not to do anything. Which, sadly, is what I think a lot of intellectuals do,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

The first Wallander novel, “Faceless Killers,” was published in 1991 and the series was made complete in 2009 with the 10th novel, “The Troubled Man.” The books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold over 30 million copies worldwide. They have been adapted into films and TV series in Sweden and a popular BBC series, starring the Northern Irish actor Kenneth Branagh.

Branagh described Mankell as “a man of passionate commitment,” who leaves an “immense contribution” to Scandinavian literature.

“I will miss his provocative intelligence and his great personal generosity,” Branagh said in a statement. “Those privileged to know him, together with readers from all over the world, will mourn a fine writer and a fine man.”

Mankell’s international success paved the way for other Scandinavian authors abroad, including “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” author Stieg Larsson and Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo. Yet he disliked talking about the Scandinavian crime fiction phenomenon and said he was mostly influenced by Sherlock Holmes and classical Greek drama.