ROCK BLASTER (PB)

At 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in 1911, Oskar Johansson is caught in a blast in an industrial accident. The local newspaper reports him dead, but they are mistaken. Though crippled, Oskar finds the strength to go on living and working. Henning Mankell's first published novel is steeped in the burning desire for social justice that informed his bestselling crime novels. It is written with scalpel-like precision, at once poetic and insightful in its depiction of a true working-class hero.