The story is set in an unnamed port city in Africa which resembles Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, where the author often lived and worked.

[2] In great contrast to the inspector, who has been described as "a morose, self-loathing plainclothes officer",[3] the novel deals with the life of the street boy Nelio and his death at age ten.

[3] The story is set in an unnamed port city in Africa, told in the first-person by a baker, José M. V. He finds Nelio, a 10-year-old boy, shot on the stage of a theatre.

He helps the wounded child who refuses medical care, and listens to the story the boy has to tell over the course of nine days before he dies.

The village was destroyed during a civil war by partisans, who killed his father, sister, and many others, and deported him and his mother to a camp from which he escapes.

José decides to give up his profession and travel as the chronicler, telling Nelio's story, reasoning: "I kept asking myself: where does the evil in human beings come from?

Mankell and director Jens Monath produced a film, Mein Herz schlägt in Afrika (My Heart Beats in Africa), which was aired in two parts by the ZDF in spring 2009.

[citation needed] It was based on topics from the novel such as the life of street children, the persecution of people with albinism, and young adults who are traumatized by spending their childhood as child soldiers.