The Shadow Girls

Tea-Bag, a young Nigerian girl, has fled a refugee camp in Spain for the promise of a new life in Sweden. Tania has made a long and dangerous journey to escape themisery of life in a brothel. Leila has travelled with her family from Iran. All of them are facing different challenges in their new home.

Meanwhile, celebrated poet Jesper Humlin is looking for inspiration. Harried by his mother and girlfriend, misunderstood by his publisher and tormented by his stockbroker, Jesper needs a new perspective on life. A chance encounter with Tea-Bag leads him into the shadow world of the immigrant experience in Sweden. Initially he sees the girls purely as material for his work, but they have very different ideas.

This inspiring novel encompasses both humour and tragedy and illuminates our understanding of those left on the margins of our society.

### Review

"Both passionate and entertaining — and a strong indication that the Swedish are not as lugubrious as their crime fiction makes them out to be."
—*The Telegraph*

### About the Author

Bestselling author **Henning Mankell** has received numerous awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association’s Macallan Gold Dagger and the German Tolerance Prize. His Kurt Wallander mysteries are global bestsellers and have been adapted into the PBS Masterpiece Mystery! series *Wallander*, starring Kenneth Branagh. He divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique. **Ebba Segerberg** has translated *One Step Behind*, *Firewall*, and *Before the Frost* by Henning Mankell (all available from The New Press) and *Let the Right One In* by John Ajvide Lindqvist. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.