Staff Pick
A weather-beaten record of resilience, The Unseen ebbs and flows with a rustic elegance that is matched only by its capacity for continual hardship. From the vicissitudes of the sea to the erosive passage of time, the occupants of the scruffy islet that serves as the novel's focal point endure everything with granite-like resolve, all the while harboring minor jubilation and fleeting desire. What Roy Jacobsen, alongside translators Bartlett and Shaw, has produced is a work of formidable, earthen storytelling and it too will endure. Recommended By Justin W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize - Shortlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award - "Even by his high standards, his magnificent new novel The Unseen is Jacobsen's finest to date, as blunt as it is subtle and is easily among the best books I have ever read."―Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
Born on the Norwegian island that bears her name, Ingrid Barr y's world is circumscribed by storm-scoured rocks and the moods of the sea by which her family lives and dies. But her father dreams of building a quay that will end their isolation, and her mother longs for the island of her youth, and the country faces its own sea change: the advent of a modern world, and all its unpredictability and violence. Brilliantly translated into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, The Unseen is the first book in the Barr y Trilogy and a moving exploration of family, resilience, and fate.