An island : a novel / Karen Jennings.
Material type: TextPublisher: New Delhi : Picador India, 2021Description: 182 pages ; 20 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9789389104202 (pbk.)
- 823.92 JEN 23 019012
- PR9369.4.J48 I85 2020
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore | 823.92 JEN 019012 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Checked out | 20/05/2024 | 019012 |
Originally published in Great Britain by Holland House Books in 2020.
"Longlisted for the Booker Prize"--Dust jacket.
"Samuel has lived alone on a small island off the coast of an unnamed African country for more than two decades. He tends to his garden, his lighthouse, and his chickens, content with a solitary life. 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. One day, though, he finds that one of these bodies is still breathing. As he nurses the stranger back to life, Samuel--feeling unsettled and strangely threatened--is soon swept up in memories of his former life as a political prisoner on the mainland: 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. And he can't help but recall his own shameful role in that history. 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, fear, and the extraordinary stakes of companionship, An Island is a story as page-turning as it is profound"--
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