NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS\' CHOICE - LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE - A beautifully and sparingly constructed ( The New York Times ) novel about a lighthouse keeper with a mysterious past, and the stranger who washes up on his shores-- An Island is the American debut of a major voice in world literature.
In this stranger\'s presence, he begins to consider, as he did in his youth: What does it mean to own land, or to belong to it? And what does it cost to have, and lose, a home? A timeless and gripping portrait of regret, terror, and the extraordinary stakes of companionship, An Island is a story as page-turning as it is profound..
And he can\'t help but recall his own shameful role in that history.
This was a life that saw his country exploited under colonial rule, followed by a period of revolution and a brief, hard-won independence--only for the cycle of suffering to continue under a cruel dictator.
As he nurses the stranger back to life, Samuel--feeling strangely threatened--is soon swept up in memories of his former life as a political prisoner on the mainland.
One day, though, he finds that one of these bodies is still breathing.
Routinely, the nameless bodies of refugees wash ashore, but Samuel--who understands that the government only values certain lives, certain deaths--always buries them himself.
He tends to his garden, his lighthouse, and his chickens, content with a solitary life.
An Island by Karen Jennings is quite simply a revelation--a ferocious, swift chess game of a novel.--Paul Yoon, author of Run Me to Earth ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vulture Samuel has lived alone on an Island off the coast of an unnamed African country for more than two decades.
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS\' CHOICE - LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE - A beautifully and sparingly constructed ( The New York Times ) novel about a lighthouse keeper with a mysterious past, and the stranger who washes up on his shores-- An Island is the American debut of a major voice in world literature
