The White Lioness

Infobox Book |
name = The White Lioness
title_orig = Den vita lejoninnan
translator = Laurie Thompson


image_caption = British first edition cover
author = Henning Mankell
cover_artist =
country = Sweden
language = Swedish
series = Kurt Wallander #3
genre = Crime novel
publisher = Harvill Secker
pub_date = 1993 (orig.)
endglish_pub_date = October 1998 (Eng. trans. )
media_type = Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
pages = 372 pp (Eng. hardback trans.)
isbn = ISBN 1860467806 (Eng. trans.)
preceded_by = The Dogs of Riga
followed_by = The Man Who Smiled

"The White Lioness" is a novel by Swedish crime-writer Henning Mankell, and is part of the Inspector Wallander series, of which it is the third.

Apart from a prologue following the formation of the Boer nationalist group Broederbond in 1918, the story takes place in 1992. The plot follows two parallel patterns, one during late apartheid South Africa where incumbent president F W de Klerk, leader of the Afrikaner minority is just on the brink of losing power to the African majority under the leadership of ANC, about to end 44 years of suppression by the Broederbond rule. Simultaneously, detective chief inspector Kurt Wallander is investigating a case of a missing female Methodist broker outside Ystad. Upon the eventual recovery of her body, as well as the achievement of a black cut-off finger on the crime scene, detective Wallander realizes the case has deep roots in the history and current development in South Africa, where an extremist cell of the Broederbond is about to orchestrate the assassination of president de Klerk, wishing to plunge the country into a long and devastating civil war...

Mankell, who himself is deeply interested in questions concerning South Africa and its history and who resides in the country part-time, released the book in 1993 during the reign of the National Party and the Afrikaner rule.