An Island, Karen Jennings
An Island, Karen Jennings
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An Island

Author: Karen Jennings

Narrator: Ben Onwukwe

Unabridged: 5 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/17/2022

Synopsis

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.

“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. 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 strangely threatened—is soon swept up in memories of his former life as a political prisoner on the mainland. 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. 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, terror, and the extraordinary stakes of companionship, An Island is a story as page-turning as it is profound.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on September 07, 2021

What had he done, what could he have done … He felt the answer rise up in his chest. These memories, these memories, hunting him down, taking possession of him. These memories, and a word now, just a word remembered, that moved inside him, sat on his tongue, waiting there, until he spoke it out l......more

Goodreads review by David on September 05, 2021

An Island is a tense, focused drama that follows Samuel, an aging lighthouse keeper, after a refugee washes ashore on the island Samuel tends off the coast of an unnamed African country. There are many layers to this short novel as we weave between the present and Samuel’s past life. Karen Jennings’......more

Goodreads review by Meike on August 01, 2021

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 It's always great when the Booker longlists authors from countries that tend to be overlooked in the literary world, like South Africa, and when the judges highlight a hidden gem: Karen Jennings, the underdog in this year's competition, wrote an ambitious politica......more

Goodreads review by Eric on August 14, 2021

Although John Donne famously wrote “No man is an island”, Karen Jennings makes a convincing case for why the particular man at the centre of her novel can no longer be connected with the nation of his birth. For decades Samuel has lived a solitary existence on an island where he tends a lighthouse,......more

Goodreads review by Gerhard on November 26, 2021

One of the fascinating questions raised by Damon Galgut’s Booker-winning ‘The Promise’ is how to write a deeply political novel without it coming across as polemical. Galgut achieves this by viewing historic events through the lens of a ‘typical’ white South African family, the Swarts. And in case w......more

Quotes

“Beautifully and sparingly constructed . . . In Jennings’s hands, this antihero’s enmeshment in his own failures has a textured credibility that’s hard to look away from. . . . No plot summary can do justice to a story woven this carefully, whose strength lies in its deliberate pacing and sharp dispensation of detail. Samuel is as real as a shaking hand.”—Lydia Millet, The New York Times

“A probing look at the roots of inhumanity and how the past can poison our compassion.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“An Island by Karen Jennings, is quite simply a revelation—a ferocious, swift chess game of a novel that urgently asks us: What will we be held responsible for in the end? This is a story of hauntings, of the unraveling of secrets and the self, and I couldn’t put it down.”—Paul Yoon, author of Run Me to Earth

“Centuries of colonialism, post-colonialism, refugee crises, political upheavals: Rare is the author who can start with such complex material and relentlessly pare it back to its essentials, as Karen Jennings does. Beginning with the arrival of a stranger on Samuel’s island, and then over the course of four tense days, we feel the weight of each decision he makes, as well as the unease, the paranoia, the ever-present threat of violence. Humble may the characters be, and rocky and windswept their island, but even here, in such unseen places, are terrible battles played out. Honest and unflinching.”—Claire Adam, author of Golden Child

“Through carefully crafted prose and keen political observations, Karen Jennings’s An Island captures history and its consequences in a narrative of quiet violence, displacement, and isolation. This compact book carries the punch of a much larger work, and it does what a good book should: It compels the reader to read on and on until the end, and then to restart once more.”—Rémy Ngamije, author of The Eternal Audience of One
 
“Allegorical and yet profoundly concrete, An Island is an insightful meditation on the illusion of isolation and the possibility of redemption, gracefully told and terrifically moving.”—Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

“Jennings adroitly weaves Samuel’s painful past into a disquieting present and through her characters captures universal human truths.”—Booklist

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