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.
Because Oskar Johansson is a born survivor.
Though crippled, Oskar finds the strength to go on living and working. The Rock Blaster charts his long professional life - his hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys. His relationship with the woman whose love saved him, with the labour movement that gave him a cause to believe in, and with his children, who do not share his ideals.
Henning Mankell´s first published novel is steeped in the burning desire for social justice that informed his bestselling crime novels. Remarkably assured for a debut, it is written with scalpel-like precision, at once poetic and insightful in its depiction of a true working-class hero.
Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding