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An Island
Samuel has lived alone for a long time; one morning he finds the sea has brought someone to offer companionship and to threaten his solitude…
A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history. In this new man’s presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth, what is meant by land and to whom it should belong. To what lengths will a person go in order to ensure that what is theirs will not be taken from them?
A novel about guilt and fear, friendship and rejection; about the meaning of home.
A gripping, terrifying and unforgettable story. Elleke Boehmer
A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history. In this new man’s presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth, what is meant by land and to whom it should belong. To what lengths will a person go in order to ensure that what is theirs will not be taken from them?
A novel about guilt and fear, friendship and rejection; about the meaning of home.
A gripping, terrifying and unforgettable story. Elleke Boehmer
119 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 12, 2020
About the author
Karen Jennings
30 books125 followersKaren Jennings is a South African writer based in Cape Town. She works in the History Department at the University of Stellenbosch, and particularly on the “Biography of an Uncharted People” project. Her debut American novel, An Island, was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 582 reviews
September 7, 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 loud. He turned his face towards the woman, bent down to her, said, “Violence.”
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and very much the welcome surprise on a longlist which favoured established authors.
Further in a list dominated more than ever by the powerhouse conglomerate Penguin Random House (6 entries) and Booker specialists Faber and Faber (3 entries) it was refreshing to see a book from a small UK press – Holland House Books.
The author of the book lives now in Brazil – having moved with her husband’s work – and that is very relevant to the novel as the author has described how
I am an introvert at the best of times, but never more so than I have been in this country. Compelled to go where my husband found work, we ended up in the centre of Brazil in a city that is predominantly conservative, full of staunch supporters of the nation’s right-wing, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, dictatorship-adoring president, Jair Bolsonaro. I have very little in common with such people. .... With no friends or family to ameliorate the situation, it was lonely and challenging. While my husband went to work every day, I was left in the apartment with the general advice not to go outside as it was unsafe …….. I was alone for 10 hours a day in an apartment on the 17th floor of a tall apartment block. I hardly went anywhere. I saw no one but our building’s security guards. When I did meet people, I was unable to have any sort of conversation with them as I knew very little Portuguese and had no opportunity to practise …. I became obsessed with the order of things – everything had its place and time – and I became unsettled when my husband disrupted that order. In my mind, he began to feel like an interloper.
The book is set over a four day period in an unnamed African country (more later on this). The third person protagonist (and this importantly us a book with a very focused third party viewpoint) Samuel is now an old man.
For twenty three years (a period which will recur in his story) he has lived as a lighthouse keeper on a remote Island – his only source of living human contact two men who visit him on a supply boat once a fortnight from the mainland - a mainland he has never revisited. Over the years though thirty two bodies have washed up on the land (initially from the chaos and violence under dictatorial rule, but in later years the bodies of unsuccessful refugees) – Samuel burying them in the walls around the Island as a further act of both distancing himself from the outside and warning people away. His existence now is a routine in personal survival, in maintaining the Island’s walls against the ingress of the sea and in fighting the growth of an invasive plant he has named smother-weed.
Samuel’s focus could be almost said to be in disproving the first part of John Donne’s famous assertion - No man is an island entire of itself - something backed up by the brilliant cover image - and avoiding being involved in mankind although as a reader we cannot help but wonder how every man’s death diminishes him further.
When therefore at the book’s start a drum washes up on shore with a body attached, Samuel’s immediate focus is on how he can use the drum. Even when the body shows signs of life, Samuel is very reluctant to get involved, preferring to hope the man dies and initially showing much more concern for a red-hen (something of an outsider and subject to attacks by the other chickens he keeps – the hen of course both for the reader and for Samuel himself standing in as a substitute for Samuel’s own predicament). But when the man shows resilience but also fear of the supply ship Samuel is suddenly forced to face the fact that he may need to share his Island with this foreign refugee.
And of course we then have the link that the author draws with her own predicament – Samuel in almost complete isolation, obsessed with order and routine, now facing disruption from an interloper – one with whom he cannot communicate (neither speaks each other’s language and Samuel is unable to read so they resort to a mutually wary sign language, one on which Samuel at least tends to place a distrustful / worst case kind of interpretation).
As the two grow to an uneasy accommodation over the next few days – Samuel sometimes by directly induced flashback, sometimes just through natural memory looks back on his life and the way it is tied up with the history of his nation.
Samuel grew up in the country but his family was forcibly removed (and some neighbours to slow to leave massacred) by the colonisers. He and his family move to the city – resorting to piecework and begging to survive - where his father is actively involved with the successful Independence Movement. However his father’s belief that the new president will remember those in the slums that fought for him persists long past the point when it has any hope of fulfillment. Samuel drifts into a life of petty crime and hustling but the country is seduced by a populist General who with a gospel of betrayal murders the president and takes over the country himself before turning into the Dictator and introducing a police state. Samuel comes into the orbit of a marxist style revolutionary group - the People’s Faction – only really committing to the movement when his occasional girlfriend challenges him to show he is worth to be father to the child she is carrying. His subsequent involvement in an ill-fated march leads to his arrest and detention in a notorious new prison (the Palace) and a prior twenty three year period – one also spent largely in psychological isolation as he sells out the movement, the mother of his son and his fellow prisoners in the face of torture. When he is finally released (in a now relatively free and prosperous society whose biggest issue now is refugees) his only surviving family – a Sister and her children – force him to start begging and then set up his Lighthouse Keeper job to get him away from them.
And of course cleverly here the second half of Donne’s statement comes in - every man is a piece of the continent because this is a novel with a deliberately set in a unnamed African country which is simultaneously every African country and with a kind of everyman protagonist both designed to represent the travails of an entire continent.
But what is more powerful is the effect all of this both societal and individual history has on Samuel and his relationship with his fellow Island dweller - I will say nothing more as this is the main narrative in the book (Samuel's and the nations life history is something which we learn more over time with many of the key areas revealed up front).
The cycle of violence and humiliation combined with the distrust engendered by isolation mean that this is not a redemptive book – as the author has said “where Samuel represents the effects of the general political history of an entire continent, a continent which has been exploited for generations, then it becomes impossible for me to write a happy ending. My job as a writer is to hold a mirror up to these realities, but it is not within my abilities to suggest solutions".
Overall this is a bleak and powerful, fable-like exploration of the long-lasting impact of colonialism in Africa and its disturbing legacy of violence-begetting-violence.
It is also an exploration of the effects and damage of isolation and the distrust and fear and almost entire lack of empathy it breeds – and so therefore I think also a potential parable about the potential legacies of COVID – not the health impacts but the potential longlasting behavioural impacts of lockdown.
Recommended and an impressive addition to the longlist.
September 5, 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’s prose is unadorned and workmanlike. The treatment of refugees and xenophobia are explored, as well as solitude and trauma.
March 19, 2023
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize
As claustrophobic as 1984 or a horror movie, while narrating the utterly believable troubled history of an anonymous decolonized country
That was what capture brought to him. It did not come with a sense of honour as he had been told it would, it did not come with pride. It brought only memories of humiliations, and a feeling that it would all continue as it had. That all the past and future was here in this piss-drenched seat, from which he could not escape.
An Island contains the visceral flashbacks of Samuel, the lighthouse keeper of the titular island. Samuel his secluded life is shaken up when a refugee washes up ashore, triggering mistrust (despite the main character thinking to himself: He could not blame a fleeing man for his hunger), misunderstanding and remembrance of the past.
This past is bleak, with him being a refugee for colonial violence, a post indepence Dictator, incarceration, overtones of betrayal; Samuel is much more morally grey and realistic (This was Samuel. A man of weakness) than the short synopsis implies. Victims and perpetrators circle each other, like Samuel and his unnamed visitor circle each other in evermore claustrophobic and eerie ways that foreshadow future, or mirror past, violence.
Also Samuel his relation with his island, keeping out the sea, is quite akin with how he tries to keep out the world at large:
The wall, that ever-collapsing wall, had been, perhaps his attempt at keeping it out, of protecting the land and himself from its onslaught.
Is paranoia justified?
Can we know the other?
How does trauma ripple through time and behaviour?
Karen Jennings wrote a fascinating book, with many quotes worth pondering:
As though there was no history, and all the past was something that had happened elsewhere, to be remembered by others.
That was what capture brought to him. It did not come with a sense of honour as he had been told it would, it did not come with pride. It brought only memories of humiliations, and a feeling that it would all continue as it had. That all the past and future was here in this piss-drenched seat, from which he could not escape.
Banning something doesn’t make it disappear.
There was a cry of seabirds, and the roar of waves striking the pebbled shore. It would continue, this relentless ebb and flow, the sea bringing what it chose. Let it come.
As claustrophobic as 1984 or a horror movie, while narrating the utterly believable troubled history of an anonymous decolonized country
That was what capture brought to him. It did not come with a sense of honour as he had been told it would, it did not come with pride. It brought only memories of humiliations, and a feeling that it would all continue as it had. That all the past and future was here in this piss-drenched seat, from which he could not escape.
An Island contains the visceral flashbacks of Samuel, the lighthouse keeper of the titular island. Samuel his secluded life is shaken up when a refugee washes up ashore, triggering mistrust (despite the main character thinking to himself: He could not blame a fleeing man for his hunger), misunderstanding and remembrance of the past.
This past is bleak, with him being a refugee for colonial violence, a post indepence Dictator, incarceration, overtones of betrayal; Samuel is much more morally grey and realistic (This was Samuel. A man of weakness) than the short synopsis implies. Victims and perpetrators circle each other, like Samuel and his unnamed visitor circle each other in evermore claustrophobic and eerie ways that foreshadow future, or mirror past, violence.
Also Samuel his relation with his island, keeping out the sea, is quite akin with how he tries to keep out the world at large:
The wall, that ever-collapsing wall, had been, perhaps his attempt at keeping it out, of protecting the land and himself from its onslaught.
Is paranoia justified?
Can we know the other?
How does trauma ripple through time and behaviour?
Karen Jennings wrote a fascinating book, with many quotes worth pondering:
As though there was no history, and all the past was something that had happened elsewhere, to be remembered by others.
That was what capture brought to him. It did not come with a sense of honour as he had been told it would, it did not come with pride. It brought only memories of humiliations, and a feeling that it would all continue as it had. That all the past and future was here in this piss-drenched seat, from which he could not escape.
Banning something doesn’t make it disappear.
There was a cry of seabirds, and the roar of waves striking the pebbled shore. It would continue, this relentless ebb and flow, the sea bringing what it chose. Let it come.
July 4, 2022
It’s sad and painful when human life is reduced to mere existence, tightly circumscribed by fear and loneliness and need to hang on to something after life has taken everything from them already. Mundane, pathetic and tragic mixed together, and you know nothing good can happen here, and you have a sinking feeling where it’s all going to lead, and yet hope against all hope that something else can come out of it. But it doesn’t because life can be brutal and fear can become all-consuming, and helplessness can evolve into the need for violence and revenge.
Set in a relatively recently decolonized country in Africa that went that sadly common route of throwing off the colonial yoke just to trade it for corrupt dictatorship that after a coup are replaced by other versions of the same corrupt dictatorship, it focuses on a claustrophobic, limited existence - not quite life, really - of a lighthouse keeper Samuel, a former political prisoner who manages to eke out a subsistence form of existence, solitary and deprived and fearful. Until one day a half-dead refugee washes up on his tiny island, disrupting his usual life in the ways Samuel just simply cannot handle.
And this sudden shake-up of the routine drudgery of life brings back memories of Samuel’s youth and subsequent imprisonment during which he bent any principle just to stay alive, the people to whom he never mattered, the life of losses and deprivations perpetuated with occasional moments of violence borne out of dissatisfaction and even crowd mentality, out of xenophobia and mistrust of otherness. It’s bleak and unsettling and extremely depressing, a story of trauma and victimhood, humiliation and violence. Samuel, always a victim — and one day it all is bound to snap.
No man is an island — but sometimes it’s what they have learned to cling to.
It’s a very short book, almost a novella, and yet in its short length it still managed to unsettle me and make me feel uncomfortable and a bit rattled. Subtle mistrust and paranoia have this way of getting under your skin, don’t they? And that’s why I didn’t quite like it because it’s hard liking something that’s deliberately written to be unlikable and uncomfortable and unsettling. But yet I respected it — even if I will never choose to reread it.
3.5 stars.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
——————
Recommended by: Left Coast Justin
“Listen, we’re busy people. We have real crimes to deal with. Actual atrocities, you understand. We cannot come out to the island every time another country’s refugees flee and drown. It’s not our problem.”
“What must I do with them then?”
“Do what you like. We don’t want them.”
Set in a relatively recently decolonized country in Africa that went that sadly common route of throwing off the colonial yoke just to trade it for corrupt dictatorship that after a coup are replaced by other versions of the same corrupt dictatorship, it focuses on a claustrophobic, limited existence - not quite life, really - of a lighthouse keeper Samuel, a former political prisoner who manages to eke out a subsistence form of existence, solitary and deprived and fearful. Until one day a half-dead refugee washes up on his tiny island, disrupting his usual life in the ways Samuel just simply cannot handle.
And this sudden shake-up of the routine drudgery of life brings back memories of Samuel’s youth and subsequent imprisonment during which he bent any principle just to stay alive, the people to whom he never mattered, the life of losses and deprivations perpetuated with occasional moments of violence borne out of dissatisfaction and even crowd mentality, out of xenophobia and mistrust of otherness. It’s bleak and unsettling and extremely depressing, a story of trauma and victimhood, humiliation and violence. Samuel, always a victim — and one day it all is bound to snap.
No man is an island — but sometimes it’s what they have learned to cling to.
It’s a very short book, almost a novella, and yet in its short length it still managed to unsettle me and make me feel uncomfortable and a bit rattled. Subtle mistrust and paranoia have this way of getting under your skin, don’t they? And that’s why I didn’t quite like it because it’s hard liking something that’s deliberately written to be unlikable and uncomfortable and unsettling. But yet I respected it — even if I will never choose to reread it.
3.5 stars.
“There was the cry of seabirds, and the roar of waves striking the pebbled shore. It would continue, this relentless ebb and flow, the sea bringing what it chose. Let it come. He crossed the threshold, closing the door of the cottage behind him.”
——————
Also posted on my blog.
——————
Recommended by: Left Coast Justin
April 5, 2024
LA VITA E IL TEMPO DI SAMUEL K
Tra l’apologo e l’allegoria, ma anche un po’ nella parabola, tra la favola e la distopia, Jennings s’inventa un mondo diviso in un innominato continente, o terraferma, e una ancora meno nominata isola, poco più di uno scoglio in mezzo al mare, ma poi non così tanto distante dalla costa (si può fare comodamente avanti e indietro tra isola e costa nella mezza giornata).
Per rendere le cose ancora meno definite, Jenkins non nomina neppure mai il colore della pelle: sono bianchi o sono neri, bianchi in terra di neri e neri a casa loro…? Non è dato sapere. Anche se varie elementi spingono per un riconoscimento con l’Africa, non ultima la nazionalità sudafricana della stessa Jennings.
Quello che sappiamo è che Samuel vive sull’isola come guardiano del faro, in completa solitudine, con la barchetta che dalla terraferma gli porta le provviste una volta ogni tanto: quando inizia il racconto, ogni due settimane. L’isola non è territorio ameno, e neppure accogliente: aspra, rocciosa, non fertile. Tutto ha bisogno di frequente manutenzione (come peraltro succede sempre in prossimità del mare).
Samuel è ormai anziano, una settantina d’anni, quando arriva la barchetta potrebbe essere l’ultima volta che si vedono, la sua fine è nell’aria.
È sull’isola da tanto, forse una dozzina d’anni, forse quindici, forse più. È venuto perché aveva bisogno di un lavoro dopo essere uscito dal carcere. E vent’anni di prigione gli hanno lasciato il segno.
Adesso lo si direbbe più eremita che guardiano del faro, più auto-recluso che impiegato.
All’inizio del romanzo Samuel trova un corpo umano sulla battigia trasportato dalle onde. Crede che sia uno dei tanti morti di migranti e rifugiati che il mare gli consegna, e che lui ha imparato a seppellire sotto cumuli di pietre. Invece l’uomo si scopre essere ancora vivo. Sorpresa.
Parla una lingua incomprensibile, e non capisce quella che Samuele parla. È più giovane di Samuel, ma è comunque solidamente adulto.
Samuel vorrebbe consegnarlo ai marinai della barchetta, ma l’uomo lo prega di proteggerlo e nasconderlo. Samuel rassegnato accetta.
Il tutto si svolge in quattro giorni. E fino a qui è la parte migliore del romanzo, quella che vale la pena leggere.
Merita meno apprendere – e io ne avrei molto volentieri fatto a meno – i tanti flashback che ci narrano la storia antecedente di Samuel, la sua famiglia, il suo paese. Da colonia all’indipendenza, prima un Presidente, poi un Dittatore, che ovviamente veste la divisa.
Altrettanto ovviamente le strade sono piene di accattoni e mendicanti, resi ancora più numerosi da quelli che approdano da fuori via mare o attraverso frontiere colapasta, così che si possa scatenare xenofobia e razzismo.
La povertà impera, la polizia domina e sgomina un’opposizione che non esiste. E così, com’è immaginabile, tutti in prigione, ammassati, trattati come bestie, picchiati, torturati, brutalizzati (Midnight Express docet).
Sarà che questo ambito del romanzo mi è apparso di un banale e scontato come raramente mi succede; sarà che il tono è particolarmente privo di vitalità; sarà che il messaggio morale è tutto meno che sottile; sarà quello che sarà, ma a me questa metà di romanzo che a spizzichi e bocconi racconta la storia antecedente di Samuel è risultata vivamente indigesta. Al punto da farmi tentennare se abbandonare la lettura o meno.
Contraddicendo la mia abitudine, questa volta ho voluto bere tutta la botte per sapere com’era il vino. Credo, soprattutto, perché s’è trattato di botte piccola (centonovanta scarse pagine).
PS
Devo dire che ogni volta che la lettura rispolverava i miei ricordi dei primi Coetzee che ho letto (che so, Terre al crepuscolo, Nel cuore del paese, Aspettando i barbari, La vita e il tempo di Michael K), per via di questa non chiarezza di luogo ed epoca, per via della scelta di un tempo astorico, per una certa vena distopica e/o ucronica, le pagine scivolavano via con mio maggior piacere.
PPSS
In bandella viene ripetuto due volte che la scrittura della Jenkins è “sontuosa”. Non potrebbe esserci aggettivo più ingannatore e fuori luogo: la scrittura della Jenkins mi è piaciuta, ma non è affatto sontuosa: è semplice e sobria, facile e piana.
Tra l’apologo e l’allegoria, ma anche un po’ nella parabola, tra la favola e la distopia, Jennings s’inventa un mondo diviso in un innominato continente, o terraferma, e una ancora meno nominata isola, poco più di uno scoglio in mezzo al mare, ma poi non così tanto distante dalla costa (si può fare comodamente avanti e indietro tra isola e costa nella mezza giornata).
Per rendere le cose ancora meno definite, Jenkins non nomina neppure mai il colore della pelle: sono bianchi o sono neri, bianchi in terra di neri e neri a casa loro…? Non è dato sapere. Anche se varie elementi spingono per un riconoscimento con l’Africa, non ultima la nazionalità sudafricana della stessa Jennings.
Quello che sappiamo è che Samuel vive sull’isola come guardiano del faro, in completa solitudine, con la barchetta che dalla terraferma gli porta le provviste una volta ogni tanto: quando inizia il racconto, ogni due settimane. L’isola non è territorio ameno, e neppure accogliente: aspra, rocciosa, non fertile. Tutto ha bisogno di frequente manutenzione (come peraltro succede sempre in prossimità del mare).
Samuel è ormai anziano, una settantina d’anni, quando arriva la barchetta potrebbe essere l’ultima volta che si vedono, la sua fine è nell’aria.
È sull’isola da tanto, forse una dozzina d’anni, forse quindici, forse più. È venuto perché aveva bisogno di un lavoro dopo essere uscito dal carcere. E vent’anni di prigione gli hanno lasciato il segno.
Adesso lo si direbbe più eremita che guardiano del faro, più auto-recluso che impiegato.
All’inizio del romanzo Samuel trova un corpo umano sulla battigia trasportato dalle onde. Crede che sia uno dei tanti morti di migranti e rifugiati che il mare gli consegna, e che lui ha imparato a seppellire sotto cumuli di pietre. Invece l’uomo si scopre essere ancora vivo. Sorpresa.
Parla una lingua incomprensibile, e non capisce quella che Samuele parla. È più giovane di Samuel, ma è comunque solidamente adulto.
Samuel vorrebbe consegnarlo ai marinai della barchetta, ma l’uomo lo prega di proteggerlo e nasconderlo. Samuel rassegnato accetta.
Il tutto si svolge in quattro giorni. E fino a qui è la parte migliore del romanzo, quella che vale la pena leggere.
Merita meno apprendere – e io ne avrei molto volentieri fatto a meno – i tanti flashback che ci narrano la storia antecedente di Samuel, la sua famiglia, il suo paese. Da colonia all’indipendenza, prima un Presidente, poi un Dittatore, che ovviamente veste la divisa.
Altrettanto ovviamente le strade sono piene di accattoni e mendicanti, resi ancora più numerosi da quelli che approdano da fuori via mare o attraverso frontiere colapasta, così che si possa scatenare xenofobia e razzismo.
La povertà impera, la polizia domina e sgomina un’opposizione che non esiste. E così, com’è immaginabile, tutti in prigione, ammassati, trattati come bestie, picchiati, torturati, brutalizzati (Midnight Express docet).
Sarà che questo ambito del romanzo mi è apparso di un banale e scontato come raramente mi succede; sarà che il tono è particolarmente privo di vitalità; sarà che il messaggio morale è tutto meno che sottile; sarà quello che sarà, ma a me questa metà di romanzo che a spizzichi e bocconi racconta la storia antecedente di Samuel è risultata vivamente indigesta. Al punto da farmi tentennare se abbandonare la lettura o meno.
Contraddicendo la mia abitudine, questa volta ho voluto bere tutta la botte per sapere com’era il vino. Credo, soprattutto, perché s’è trattato di botte piccola (centonovanta scarse pagine).
PS
Devo dire che ogni volta che la lettura rispolverava i miei ricordi dei primi Coetzee che ho letto (che so, Terre al crepuscolo, Nel cuore del paese, Aspettando i barbari, La vita e il tempo di Michael K), per via di questa non chiarezza di luogo ed epoca, per via della scelta di un tempo astorico, per una certa vena distopica e/o ucronica, le pagine scivolavano via con mio maggior piacere.
PPSS
In bandella viene ripetuto due volte che la scrittura della Jenkins è “sontuosa”. Non potrebbe esserci aggettivo più ingannatore e fuori luogo: la scrittura della Jenkins mi è piaciuta, ma non è affatto sontuosa: è semplice e sobria, facile e piana.
August 1, 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 political parable that is also poetic and so suspenseful that it is a real page-turner. Our protagonist is Samuel, a 70-year-old man from an unspecified African country who lives alone on the title-giving island, working as a lighthouse keeper (the lighthouse might generally be an overused metaphor, but here, it is employed brilliantly: The island has a lighthouse AND a wall which Samuel tries to keep from crumbling). One day, a young man is washed ashore, and as he and Samuel don't speak the same language, they can't communicate well. Although everything indicates that the man is a survivor from a sunken refugee boat, there is no absolute certainty, and Samuel is haunted by his fears: Is the young guy really a refugee running from war and/or poverty, or is he a criminal on the run from the law? Will he leave, does he intend to live peacefully with Samuel, or does he want to overtake the island, Samuel's home?
It's easy to see how Jennings reflects current events and discussions in this story (the year it is set in is not specified, but climate change is mentioned, so it is probably our time). Usually, stories about refugees that we (i.e., Europeans) hear center on young men coming to Europe. Here, two Africans meet on an island, both traumatized by their past. What Samuel experiences with the young man triggers all kinds of flashbacks that reveal his life story and, through it, the history of the African country the story is set in: Colonization, dictatorship, a failing, corrupt pseudo-democracy. It's highly impressive how Jennings conveys how the political landscape has affected Samuel, and how his experiences shape his reactions towards the young man: Samuel is haunted by the injustice, the degradation, the killings he has witnessed; he is ashamed of his own failings; he also thinks back to the people who showed mercy towards him; but he is terrified that the young man might take the last thing that belongs to him: His island.
Please note that the cover shows an island in the form of a man's head: After all the turmoil Samuel has lived through, he chose this island as his refuge, and, keeping away from the main land, has become an island himself. But as the famous quote by John Donne suggests, that's no way to live: No man is an island ("No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.") This doesn't only go for the fictional people in the book, it also goes for real people everywhere, and they are all affected by the questions discussed in the novel, just in slightly different ways.
The story is driven by the question what Samuel and the young man will do, whether they will be able to co-exist or even work together - and as the reader doesn't know more about the man than elderly Samuel, whose trauma seems to cloud his judgement, the tension is tangible: I feared for the safety of both of them. This novel really rattled my nerves, it's a deeply moral parable that never spells out its subtext, posing questions that affect everyone. It's a book about fear and empathy, it does nothing less than asking what it means to show humanity.
I want this book, a political chamber play dressed as a thriller, to go very, very far in the competition. The longer I think about this text, the better it gets, as it offers so much nuance and psychologically convincing character development - and those metaphors are just so well chosen (this ending - wow). I have only read half the list so far, but for now, this is my winner.
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 political parable that is also poetic and so suspenseful that it is a real page-turner. Our protagonist is Samuel, a 70-year-old man from an unspecified African country who lives alone on the title-giving island, working as a lighthouse keeper (the lighthouse might generally be an overused metaphor, but here, it is employed brilliantly: The island has a lighthouse AND a wall which Samuel tries to keep from crumbling). One day, a young man is washed ashore, and as he and Samuel don't speak the same language, they can't communicate well. Although everything indicates that the man is a survivor from a sunken refugee boat, there is no absolute certainty, and Samuel is haunted by his fears: Is the young guy really a refugee running from war and/or poverty, or is he a criminal on the run from the law? Will he leave, does he intend to live peacefully with Samuel, or does he want to overtake the island, Samuel's home?
It's easy to see how Jennings reflects current events and discussions in this story (the year it is set in is not specified, but climate change is mentioned, so it is probably our time). Usually, stories about refugees that we (i.e., Europeans) hear center on young men coming to Europe. Here, two Africans meet on an island, both traumatized by their past. What Samuel experiences with the young man triggers all kinds of flashbacks that reveal his life story and, through it, the history of the African country the story is set in: Colonization, dictatorship, a failing, corrupt pseudo-democracy. It's highly impressive how Jennings conveys how the political landscape has affected Samuel, and how his experiences shape his reactions towards the young man: Samuel is haunted by the injustice, the degradation, the killings he has witnessed; he is ashamed of his own failings; he also thinks back to the people who showed mercy towards him; but he is terrified that the young man might take the last thing that belongs to him: His island.
Please note that the cover shows an island in the form of a man's head: After all the turmoil Samuel has lived through, he chose this island as his refuge, and, keeping away from the main land, has become an island himself. But as the famous quote by John Donne suggests, that's no way to live: No man is an island ("No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.") This doesn't only go for the fictional people in the book, it also goes for real people everywhere, and they are all affected by the questions discussed in the novel, just in slightly different ways.
The story is driven by the question what Samuel and the young man will do, whether they will be able to co-exist or even work together - and as the reader doesn't know more about the man than elderly Samuel, whose trauma seems to cloud his judgement, the tension is tangible: I feared for the safety of both of them. This novel really rattled my nerves, it's a deeply moral parable that never spells out its subtext, posing questions that affect everyone. It's a book about fear and empathy, it does nothing less than asking what it means to show humanity.
I want this book, a political chamber play dressed as a thriller, to go very, very far in the competition. The longer I think about this text, the better it gets, as it offers so much nuance and psychologically convincing character development - and those metaphors are just so well chosen (this ending - wow). I have only read half the list so far, but for now, this is my winner.
August 10, 2021
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021
Two men spend four days trapped on an island together, in an unnamed African country. The first, Samuel, has been the lighthouse keeper there for twenty years. The second, name unknown, has just washed up on the beach, the sole survivor of a sunken refugee boat. They share no common language.
We follow Samuel’s point of view—his unease at having his daily routine disturbed, his mistrust of the stranger. Unable to communicate verbally, Samuel interprets the man’s ordinary actions as threatening and worries he will be murdered in his bed, but at other times he feels sympathy for the man’s plight.
Samuel’s paranoia ebbs and flows but the tension and sense of foreboding are sustained. This book is not about edge-of-your-seat thrills, but more of a slow-burn ‘where is this going?’ that makes for a compulsive read.
Meanwhile, flashbacks tell of Samuel’s troubled life before the island. It is a story which mirrors the history of his country: dispossession by ‘the colonisers’; a struggle for independence and a new regime soon marred with dysfunction; a military coup that installs a dictator and crushes the freedoms so newly won.
The more you learn about Samuel’s past, the more uncertain things become for the two men in the present. The novel becomes an exercise in understanding: to explain a man’s actions in a single moment, you need to know his entire life story. It’s beautifully constructed, and when Jennings has the choice between a feel-good moment for the reader and doing what is most true to the character she has created, she chooses the latter—to the novel’s great benefit.
An Island also operates on an allegorical level, with the characters functioning as symbols of larger geopolitical struggles and/or postcolonialism. This didn’t quite pay off for me which is a shame because I always love it when a book works on multiple levels. It’s hard to express why it fell short without spoiling the ending, which I thought was a perfect bullseye for the character-driven story, but worrisome (perhaps even controversial?) when read allegorically.
An Island may be short but it offers plenty to think about, especially in the character of Samuel and to what extent the events of his life (and his country’s history) have shaped him. 4 stars.
Two men spend four days trapped on an island together, in an unnamed African country. The first, Samuel, has been the lighthouse keeper there for twenty years. The second, name unknown, has just washed up on the beach, the sole survivor of a sunken refugee boat. They share no common language.
We follow Samuel’s point of view—his unease at having his daily routine disturbed, his mistrust of the stranger. Unable to communicate verbally, Samuel interprets the man’s ordinary actions as threatening and worries he will be murdered in his bed, but at other times he feels sympathy for the man’s plight.
Samuel’s paranoia ebbs and flows but the tension and sense of foreboding are sustained. This book is not about edge-of-your-seat thrills, but more of a slow-burn ‘where is this going?’ that makes for a compulsive read.
Meanwhile, flashbacks tell of Samuel’s troubled life before the island. It is a story which mirrors the history of his country: dispossession by ‘the colonisers’; a struggle for independence and a new regime soon marred with dysfunction; a military coup that installs a dictator and crushes the freedoms so newly won.
The more you learn about Samuel’s past, the more uncertain things become for the two men in the present. The novel becomes an exercise in understanding: to explain a man’s actions in a single moment, you need to know his entire life story. It’s beautifully constructed, and when Jennings has the choice between a feel-good moment for the reader and doing what is most true to the character she has created, she chooses the latter—to the novel’s great benefit.
An Island also operates on an allegorical level, with the characters functioning as symbols of larger geopolitical struggles and/or postcolonialism. This didn’t quite pay off for me which is a shame because I always love it when a book works on multiple levels. It’s hard to express why it fell short without spoiling the ending, which I thought was a perfect bullseye for the character-driven story, but worrisome (perhaps even controversial?) when read allegorically.
An Island may be short but it offers plenty to think about, especially in the character of Samuel and to what extent the events of his life (and his country’s history) have shaped him. 4 stars.
June 6, 2022
Splendid Isolation
Samuel lives alone on an island off the coast of Africa, charged with maintaining a lighthouse. He is an old man, worn down by the pain dealt by the civilized world. He just wants to be left alone on his land, his island. His function is to oversee the place, keep the lighthouse going, and to bury the dead bodies who wash up on the shore. These are refugees who desperately crammed themselves onto makeshift boats and did not make it. The bodies were no longer of interest to the government and were even ridiculed by the men who drop off the island’s supplies… “There were bodies floating everywhere… those sharks of yours won’t be starving anymore!" and "They deserve it, don’t they?... Anyone stupid enough to pack themselves in a rotting boat like that and try to enter another country illegally is asking to die.”
Samuel’s world is turned upside down when one of the bodies washes up still alive. Samuel’s initial instinct is to help, to be friendly, to do the right thing. This stranger, a much younger and physically imposing man, does not speak Samuel’s language and that adds to an estrangement and lack of understanding between the two. His mere presence threatens Samuel and triggers a series of memories pouring out: all his regrets and hardships, all the mistakes he feels he has made, all the trauma associated with his life outside the island. The sense of joy over some companionship is struggling with a paranoia to protect what is his.
Refugees. There are few social issues which test the conscience like the refugee one. Love thy neighbor– hard to argue with that concept. How does this change when a stranger enters the picture and seems a real threat? Samuel has worked hard, has built his walls to seal his world.
“This land is mine. I am the land.” –Samuel
“An Island” surprised many when it was on the 2021 Booker Prize Longlist. It is a relatively short novel and one that had a hard time getting noticed by publishers in the first place. Karen Jennings has written a beautifully concise and insightful portrait of a man both consumed by and trapped by his island. Thank you Random House / Hogarth and NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #AnIsland #NetGalley
Samuel lives alone on an island off the coast of Africa, charged with maintaining a lighthouse. He is an old man, worn down by the pain dealt by the civilized world. He just wants to be left alone on his land, his island. His function is to oversee the place, keep the lighthouse going, and to bury the dead bodies who wash up on the shore. These are refugees who desperately crammed themselves onto makeshift boats and did not make it. The bodies were no longer of interest to the government and were even ridiculed by the men who drop off the island’s supplies… “There were bodies floating everywhere… those sharks of yours won’t be starving anymore!" and "They deserve it, don’t they?... Anyone stupid enough to pack themselves in a rotting boat like that and try to enter another country illegally is asking to die.”
Samuel’s world is turned upside down when one of the bodies washes up still alive. Samuel’s initial instinct is to help, to be friendly, to do the right thing. This stranger, a much younger and physically imposing man, does not speak Samuel’s language and that adds to an estrangement and lack of understanding between the two. His mere presence threatens Samuel and triggers a series of memories pouring out: all his regrets and hardships, all the mistakes he feels he has made, all the trauma associated with his life outside the island. The sense of joy over some companionship is struggling with a paranoia to protect what is his.
Refugees. There are few social issues which test the conscience like the refugee one. Love thy neighbor– hard to argue with that concept. How does this change when a stranger enters the picture and seems a real threat? Samuel has worked hard, has built his walls to seal his world.
“This land is mine. I am the land.” –Samuel
“An Island” surprised many when it was on the 2021 Booker Prize Longlist. It is a relatively short novel and one that had a hard time getting noticed by publishers in the first place. Karen Jennings has written a beautifully concise and insightful portrait of a man both consumed by and trapped by his island. Thank you Random House / Hogarth and NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #AnIsland #NetGalley
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, keeps a meagre garden and occasionally buries the refugees who wash ashore. But, when Samuel is in his seventies, one day an unconscious young man that is barely alive appears on the beach. They don't speak the same language and become uneasy companions. His presence stirs thoughts of the past for Samuel who finds: “Memories were there too, coming fast that morning – things best forgotten now approaching as steadily as waves approach the shore.” In fragmented scenes we come to understand Samuel's impoverished beginnings in an African nation that underwent a violent revolution but whose utopian dream quickly faltered after the rise of a dictator that imprisoned many dissidents and protestors - including Samuel. Now that his fragile, circumscribed existence has been disturbed he struggles to accept the presence of another individual.
At first I found the way the narrative introduces slivers from Samuel's past to be too jarring as it's sometimes a struggle to understand what's happening. But I quickly came to understand that this was a result of Samuel's brittle state of mind as he's experienced a lot of trauma and devastating disappointment in his life. Gradually I came to see he's not so much a man that is driven by any definite convictions but, like many of us, he's jostled through life according to the dominant politics and ideologies of his society. In one period he might be progressive, in another he might reinforce prejudiced attitudes and when he's trapped in a prison he's willing to do whatever it takes to avoid torture. It's sympathetically shown how he simply wants a better life for himself: “Who didn't want to be more than they were, who didn't want to rise up out of the dirt and be something?” But, because of his circumstances, he finds it impossible to establish any secure existence. He's unable to commit physical violence and it's interesting to consider whether this is because of his own meekness or a determination not to harm other living beings.
Read my full review of An Island by Karen Jennings on LonesomeReader
At first I found the way the narrative introduces slivers from Samuel's past to be too jarring as it's sometimes a struggle to understand what's happening. But I quickly came to understand that this was a result of Samuel's brittle state of mind as he's experienced a lot of trauma and devastating disappointment in his life. Gradually I came to see he's not so much a man that is driven by any definite convictions but, like many of us, he's jostled through life according to the dominant politics and ideologies of his society. In one period he might be progressive, in another he might reinforce prejudiced attitudes and when he's trapped in a prison he's willing to do whatever it takes to avoid torture. It's sympathetically shown how he simply wants a better life for himself: “Who didn't want to be more than they were, who didn't want to rise up out of the dirt and be something?” But, because of his circumstances, he finds it impossible to establish any secure existence. He's unable to commit physical violence and it's interesting to consider whether this is because of his own meekness or a determination not to harm other living beings.
Read my full review of An Island by Karen Jennings on LonesomeReader
November 27, 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 we suspect the author is hiding behind the prejudices and peccadilloes of his deeply-flawed characters, we also have an omniscient narrator who (and this is a stroke of cheeky genius on Galgut’s part), passes judgement on the reader him- or herself.
The other way to sidestep the thorny nettle of politics in contemporary South African fiction is to go the allegorical route. This is a tried-and-trusted African literary tradition actually that has produced such classics as ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe. Karen Jennings, however, seems to stretch her allegory to the point where it blurs into the kind of omniscient multiverse speculative fiction so superbly rendered by Christopher Priest in his ‘Dream Archipelago’ series.
Eckard Smuts (there is a certain irony to the reviewer’s name, with Jan Smuts serving as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919-1924 and 1939-1948, and who played a key role in establishing and defining the League of Nations, United Nations and Commonwealth of Nations) writes in his 17 October 2021 review in The Daily Maverick:
Other reviewers have noted that the unnamed nation in which the story is set doesn’t seem to correspond to any particular African country. Events that carry a whiff of contemporary South African history — xenophobia, the toppling of statues — crop up against a backdrop of colonial brutality, dictatorship and present-day disillusionment and decay that might locate Samuel’s country on any corner of the African continent (or, for that matter, on another continent). Nor does the geography of the barren island betray proximity to any particular stretch of African coastline, leaving readers to sift for clues in ambiguous physical details like the fact that the cliffs along the northern shore are “worn smooth by wind and rain”.
This kind of defines the problem that I experienced with this novel, in that it is too simplistic (and moralistic) for an allegory, and not nearly nuanced enough to be a proper character study. The larger, much more necessary, question for me is how this particular novel fits into, and takes forward, the South African literary tradition. Does it say anything more on the subject of postcolonialism than, say, a twice-Booker winner like J.M. Coetzee hasn’t already said in classics like ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ and ‘Foe’?
The answer has to be no. ‘An Island’ is not only familiar territory for many South African readers, but also seems to be a strangely regressive little hiccup in our literary tradition. What possible purpose does such a novel serve in our current historic moment? Yes, we know that today’s struggle or independence movement is invariably tomorrow’s dictatorship. This is partially the evolutionary journey that South African politics is going through right now, especially as we move towards a more pluralistic democracy after the ruling party lost its majority in our most recent local government elections, opening the way for multi-party coalitions to rule on behalf of the citizenry. Well, trying to. There is a lot of squabbling and peacocking going on at the moment, almost like Samuel’s fractious brood of chickens.
But if you read ‘An Island’, this trajectory is simplified as Freedom Movement, Struggle, Independence, Dictator, Revolution, etc. all looping together into a Möbius strip of political consciousness, repression and repercussion. What makes Galgut’s book so profound to read at our current moment is precisely due to his fortuitous reminder that history is fluid and not fixed; Jennings, on the other hand, seems to suggest that history takes place largely in the wings in the form of dark satanic mills whipping up dialectical forces that no human being can hope to oppose.
Jennings has been living in São Paolo for six years. Unable to speak Portuguese, and afraid to wander around on her own in an alien and dangerous city, she describes being holed up in her apartment and pouring her experience and frustration into writing about Samuel on his island. Imagine if she had included herself as a character in her book, and how much more depth this would have added to it. After all, writers like S.J. Naude tackle similar themes of alienation and the expat diaspora from a European perspective, but still keeping their books firmly rooted in the bloody and hard-trodden soil of Africa.
Virtually unknown in South Africa until her Booker longlisting, which was only due to the generosity of some niche publishers financing an initial 500-book print run, Jennings’ own story is far more fascinating to me than Samuel himself, even though he may be Mandela, Mugabe and God all rolled into a single allegorical package, looking after his chickens and vegetables on his bleak little homestead on a tiny speck of a godforsaken island, and also tending the hand-built stone wall meant to not only keep out the rest of the world, but ward off the forces of history itself.
The other way to sidestep the thorny nettle of politics in contemporary South African fiction is to go the allegorical route. This is a tried-and-trusted African literary tradition actually that has produced such classics as ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe. Karen Jennings, however, seems to stretch her allegory to the point where it blurs into the kind of omniscient multiverse speculative fiction so superbly rendered by Christopher Priest in his ‘Dream Archipelago’ series.
Eckard Smuts (there is a certain irony to the reviewer’s name, with Jan Smuts serving as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919-1924 and 1939-1948, and who played a key role in establishing and defining the League of Nations, United Nations and Commonwealth of Nations) writes in his 17 October 2021 review in The Daily Maverick:
Other reviewers have noted that the unnamed nation in which the story is set doesn’t seem to correspond to any particular African country. Events that carry a whiff of contemporary South African history — xenophobia, the toppling of statues — crop up against a backdrop of colonial brutality, dictatorship and present-day disillusionment and decay that might locate Samuel’s country on any corner of the African continent (or, for that matter, on another continent). Nor does the geography of the barren island betray proximity to any particular stretch of African coastline, leaving readers to sift for clues in ambiguous physical details like the fact that the cliffs along the northern shore are “worn smooth by wind and rain”.
This kind of defines the problem that I experienced with this novel, in that it is too simplistic (and moralistic) for an allegory, and not nearly nuanced enough to be a proper character study. The larger, much more necessary, question for me is how this particular novel fits into, and takes forward, the South African literary tradition. Does it say anything more on the subject of postcolonialism than, say, a twice-Booker winner like J.M. Coetzee hasn’t already said in classics like ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ and ‘Foe’?
The answer has to be no. ‘An Island’ is not only familiar territory for many South African readers, but also seems to be a strangely regressive little hiccup in our literary tradition. What possible purpose does such a novel serve in our current historic moment? Yes, we know that today’s struggle or independence movement is invariably tomorrow’s dictatorship. This is partially the evolutionary journey that South African politics is going through right now, especially as we move towards a more pluralistic democracy after the ruling party lost its majority in our most recent local government elections, opening the way for multi-party coalitions to rule on behalf of the citizenry. Well, trying to. There is a lot of squabbling and peacocking going on at the moment, almost like Samuel’s fractious brood of chickens.
But if you read ‘An Island’, this trajectory is simplified as Freedom Movement, Struggle, Independence, Dictator, Revolution, etc. all looping together into a Möbius strip of political consciousness, repression and repercussion. What makes Galgut’s book so profound to read at our current moment is precisely due to his fortuitous reminder that history is fluid and not fixed; Jennings, on the other hand, seems to suggest that history takes place largely in the wings in the form of dark satanic mills whipping up dialectical forces that no human being can hope to oppose.
Jennings has been living in São Paolo for six years. Unable to speak Portuguese, and afraid to wander around on her own in an alien and dangerous city, she describes being holed up in her apartment and pouring her experience and frustration into writing about Samuel on his island. Imagine if she had included herself as a character in her book, and how much more depth this would have added to it. After all, writers like S.J. Naude tackle similar themes of alienation and the expat diaspora from a European perspective, but still keeping their books firmly rooted in the bloody and hard-trodden soil of Africa.
Virtually unknown in South Africa until her Booker longlisting, which was only due to the generosity of some niche publishers financing an initial 500-book print run, Jennings’ own story is far more fascinating to me than Samuel himself, even though he may be Mandela, Mugabe and God all rolled into a single allegorical package, looking after his chickens and vegetables on his bleak little homestead on a tiny speck of a godforsaken island, and also tending the hand-built stone wall meant to not only keep out the rest of the world, but ward off the forces of history itself.
September 8, 2024
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize
An Island is published by the small independent press Holland House Books, founded in 2012, and who focus on literary fiction and non-fiction. I first encountered them via Kate Armstrong's brilliant The Storyteller which was longlisted for the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Prize.
"We didn't have money to send our children to school," Samuel's mother said. "But your child will have more opportunities. We will work hard to make sure that happemd. He will read and write. He will be an educated man and get a good job. Maybe in the bank."
Samuel's father nodded, "Oh yes, and he will have a name to match his good fortune. Freedom or Independence. Something like that, to that each time he speaks his name, he will do so with pride, knowing what his grandfather fought for, knowing that I gave him this gift of freedom from slavery."
That was when Meria could take no more. "Where is your freedom? What did independence bring you? Your generation brought us failure, nothing more. You should have done it properly. You should have obliterated it all, started from the beginning, and not simply tried to repeat what we had before. A corrupt elite, enslaving the poor. The poor must rise up. That is when you will have freedom, only then. Not this crippled existence of scrounging and scrounging and telling yourself that it is what you almost died for. This isn't freedom, and no child of mine will be taught to think that this prison of exploitation is anything other than what it is."
Samuel's father blinked. "You are very angry, girl. If you are not careful, the child will be bom with a bitter heart."
An Island is a deceptively simple fable at face value, but profound and moving. It is narrated from the perspective of Samuel, aged 70. For 23 years he has lived alone on a remote island off the coast of the mainland, as keeper of the lighthouse. As the novel progresses we learn more of his backstory, one set in a generic post-colonial country. From the author:
As a child, Samuel's family were driven from their rural home as their land was appropriated by the colonial. In the city, he and his younger sister had to beg to make ends meet, but their father became involved in the independence movement. But when independence came, the first President lived in wealth while the country suffered, although Samuel's father's loyalty to the regime never wavered. The President was soon overthrown in a coup by his more senior General, who also carried out a purge of foreigners in the country, and then set himself up as a Dictator, for a quarter of a century. In the early years of the, even more corrupt, Dictator's regime, Samuel found himself drawn into a resistance movement and, after being arrested, spent 23 years in prison (the mirror of his time so far on the island) before the fall of the regime and his release.
The novel's present-day narrative drive comes from the arrival of a refugee on the island, washed-up after the shipwreck of a boat of asylum seekers. The two are unable to communicate via a shared language, and the narrative also remains outside of the newcomer's thoughts:
Samuel grows suspicious of the newcomer's intentions, and increasingly jealous of his island kingdom, the early violence and humiliation inflicted on him throughout much of his life now resurfacing in an intolerance of others.
A great discovery by the Booker jury, and a book I definitely hope to see on the shortlist, as well as a publisher to watch - if you can, buy the book direct: https://www.hhousebooks.com/books/an-...
Interviews with the author
About the novel: https://www.litnet.co.za/an-island-by...
A more personal take: https://tiahbeautement.wordpress.com/...
An Island is published by the small independent press Holland House Books, founded in 2012, and who focus on literary fiction and non-fiction. I first encountered them via Kate Armstrong's brilliant The Storyteller which was longlisted for the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Prize.
"We didn't have money to send our children to school," Samuel's mother said. "But your child will have more opportunities. We will work hard to make sure that happemd. He will read and write. He will be an educated man and get a good job. Maybe in the bank."
Samuel's father nodded, "Oh yes, and he will have a name to match his good fortune. Freedom or Independence. Something like that, to that each time he speaks his name, he will do so with pride, knowing what his grandfather fought for, knowing that I gave him this gift of freedom from slavery."
That was when Meria could take no more. "Where is your freedom? What did independence bring you? Your generation brought us failure, nothing more. You should have done it properly. You should have obliterated it all, started from the beginning, and not simply tried to repeat what we had before. A corrupt elite, enslaving the poor. The poor must rise up. That is when you will have freedom, only then. Not this crippled existence of scrounging and scrounging and telling yourself that it is what you almost died for. This isn't freedom, and no child of mine will be taught to think that this prison of exploitation is anything other than what it is."
Samuel's father blinked. "You are very angry, girl. If you are not careful, the child will be bom with a bitter heart."
An Island is a deceptively simple fable at face value, but profound and moving. It is narrated from the perspective of Samuel, aged 70. For 23 years he has lived alone on a remote island off the coast of the mainland, as keeper of the lighthouse. As the novel progresses we learn more of his backstory, one set in a generic post-colonial country. From the author:
I didn’t set out to write a fable – or, rather, I did not think about it explicitly in those terms – yet I believe that the description is an apt one, to a certain extent. I wanted to explore certain complexities relating to the history of the African continent and how that history continues to influence the lives of individuals to this day. Because that history is such a multifaceted one that is shared, to varying degrees, by numerous African countries, I wanted to reduce the narrative to a small location, with few characters, and by those means amplify the key concerns.
One of those concerns is examining the life of an ordinary individual. There is nothing special about Samuel. He is not heroic, intelligent, skilled or wealthy. He is very much an everyman – an everyman who has experienced aspects of colonisation, of being made to flee his home, of poverty, of the fight for independence, of torture and imprisonment under a dictatorship, and of trying to find his place in all of that chaos and horror. What does a man like Samuel have? How does he feel? What will he do in order to protect his home?
As a child, Samuel's family were driven from their rural home as their land was appropriated by the colonial. In the city, he and his younger sister had to beg to make ends meet, but their father became involved in the independence movement. But when independence came, the first President lived in wealth while the country suffered, although Samuel's father's loyalty to the regime never wavered. The President was soon overthrown in a coup by his more senior General, who also carried out a purge of foreigners in the country, and then set himself up as a Dictator, for a quarter of a century. In the early years of the, even more corrupt, Dictator's regime, Samuel found himself drawn into a resistance movement and, after being arrested, spent 23 years in prison (the mirror of his time so far on the island) before the fall of the regime and his release.
The novel's present-day narrative drive comes from the arrival of a refugee on the island, washed-up after the shipwreck of a boat of asylum seekers. The two are unable to communicate via a shared language, and the narrative also remains outside of the newcomer's thoughts:
This was a conscious choice on my part from the moment that I first had the idea for the novel. Firstly, there have been numerous successful narratives told from the point of view of refugees. They are important stories and should continue to be written. However, I was more interested in looking at the other side – the xenophobic side. What is it that makes people embrace that intolerance?
Additionally, I felt that it was crucial to highlight the difficulty that arises from lack of communication and when individuals are viewed as no more than objects. Because Samuel knows nothing about the man – not where he came from, not what his story is – it is much easier to hate him.
Samuel grows suspicious of the newcomer's intentions, and increasingly jealous of his island kingdom, the early violence and humiliation inflicted on him throughout much of his life now resurfacing in an intolerance of others.
Violence begets violence. Samuel has been exposed to it from a young age through the different stages that his country has gone through politically, and through the effects of those changes on him and those around him. His first experience of this violence was when the colonisers chased his family and their many neighbours away from the valley in which they lived, killing those who did not go fast enough. This is the legacy left by the colonisers when they eventually leave the country: a legacy of blood, exploitation, torture and murder. It is difficult to move beyond that.
Furthermore, violence is a way to humiliate, to subjugate others. When Samuel’s father rose up in order to fight for his nation’s independence, he was crippled in the protest. What disgusts Samuel is that his father believes he was part of something great and good, yet the majority of those who rose up continued to live in filth and poverty, begging, scraping by, while the new independent leaders, such as the president, filled their coffers and forgot the everyday citizens who had put them in power and to whom they had promised the world.
A great discovery by the Booker jury, and a book I definitely hope to see on the shortlist, as well as a publisher to watch - if you can, buy the book direct: https://www.hhousebooks.com/books/an-...
Interviews with the author
About the novel: https://www.litnet.co.za/an-island-by...
A more personal take: https://tiahbeautement.wordpress.com/...
August 6, 2021
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021
This is another of the more interesting of the surprises on the Booker longlist, not least because it is the only representative of the small presses that publish so much of the most interesting literature we see - I think this is my first Holland House book, but I will look out for them in future.
The book itself is striking and well written but a little bleak. The foreground story has two main characters, Samuel, a lighthouse keeper who lives a solitary life on a small island, and a refugee (whose name Samuel never learns properly) who washes up on its shore. The other characters are either there to flesh out Samuel's back story in what seems to be a fairly typical black African state, where he started out as part of an independence struggle but soon ended up imprisoned by the man known simply as the Dictator. The island is his refuge from these mental scars, but his fragile balance is upset by the newcomer, and he becomes paranoid about the man's intentions.
All of this must have an element of allegory, and the result is quite powerful - this book would be a worthy shortlist contender even if it is unlikely to win.
This is another of the more interesting of the surprises on the Booker longlist, not least because it is the only representative of the small presses that publish so much of the most interesting literature we see - I think this is my first Holland House book, but I will look out for them in future.
The book itself is striking and well written but a little bleak. The foreground story has two main characters, Samuel, a lighthouse keeper who lives a solitary life on a small island, and a refugee (whose name Samuel never learns properly) who washes up on its shore. The other characters are either there to flesh out Samuel's back story in what seems to be a fairly typical black African state, where he started out as part of an independence struggle but soon ended up imprisoned by the man known simply as the Dictator. The island is his refuge from these mental scars, but his fragile balance is upset by the newcomer, and he becomes paranoid about the man's intentions.
All of this must have an element of allegory, and the result is quite powerful - this book would be a worthy shortlist contender even if it is unlikely to win.
May 24, 2023
This was a very well-written book—the story of an ex-political prisoner who, once released from prison, took a job as a lighthouse keeper on a tiny, isolated island off the coast of Africa.
Much of the book consisted of flashbacks to Samuel’s earlier life as a protester and dissident, but I thought Jennings did a good job of weaving them into the current storyline in a way that made sense, piecing the past and present time frames together.
Samuel had been alone on the island for 20 years—other than the odd visit from a supply boat. Over the years, bodies would periodically wash up onshore, and he’d bury them in his garden. But this day, the large body that appeared was alive, though just barely. Samuel dragged him into his cottage and, eventually, the Man came around. But they could not speak each other’s language. Samuel was suspicious of the Man's intentions, though Man's eyes were wide with fear. Neither was certain the other could be trusted, and Samuel’s persistent flashbacks were making him paranoid. But after several days, the two settled into an understanding of sorts. Samuel even admitted he’d been lonely until now.
And then BAM! That ending.😖
Much of the book consisted of flashbacks to Samuel’s earlier life as a protester and dissident, but I thought Jennings did a good job of weaving them into the current storyline in a way that made sense, piecing the past and present time frames together.
Samuel had been alone on the island for 20 years—other than the odd visit from a supply boat. Over the years, bodies would periodically wash up onshore, and he’d bury them in his garden. But this day, the large body that appeared was alive, though just barely. Samuel dragged him into his cottage and, eventually, the Man came around. But they could not speak each other’s language. Samuel was suspicious of the Man's intentions, though Man's eyes were wide with fear. Neither was certain the other could be trusted, and Samuel’s persistent flashbacks were making him paranoid. But after several days, the two settled into an understanding of sorts. Samuel even admitted he’d been lonely until now.
And then BAM! That ending.😖
May 6, 2022
This was longlisted (but not shortlisted) for the Booker Prize in 2021 but is just now coming out in the United States later this month. I had early access from Random House in audio.
Karen Jennings is a white South African writer, and I only say this because the narrative voice and audiobook narrator (Ben Onwukwe) are definitely Black. The narrator in the story is African but the country of origin is unnamed. This made me a little squirmy for sure - Africa is a varied and complex place and I don't think it hurts anyone to just go ahead and place the story relating to a specific time and place. Perhaps the author was angling for universal themes.
The story is about Samuel, who has been tending a lighthouse on an island off the coast of "somewhere in Africa" for two decades. He has regular deliveries of supplies but lives mostly on his own. Some kind of conflict has sent the occasional dead body to his shore, and he always buries them. One day, one of the bodies is still alive and it puts his small life and his personal history in a spin.
Karen Jennings is a white South African writer, and I only say this because the narrative voice and audiobook narrator (Ben Onwukwe) are definitely Black. The narrator in the story is African but the country of origin is unnamed. This made me a little squirmy for sure - Africa is a varied and complex place and I don't think it hurts anyone to just go ahead and place the story relating to a specific time and place. Perhaps the author was angling for universal themes.
The story is about Samuel, who has been tending a lighthouse on an island off the coast of "somewhere in Africa" for two decades. He has regular deliveries of supplies but lives mostly on his own. Some kind of conflict has sent the occasional dead body to his shore, and he always buries them. One day, one of the bodies is still alive and it puts his small life and his personal history in a spin.
August 15, 2021
Karen Jennings has created a compact, powerful fable that considers several of the modern world's greatest crises. She does so obliquely, approaching issues like climate change, the rise of fascism, racism, and interpersonal violence by using only two featured characters and setting them on a remote island. It is both understated and highly effective.
While there are clear references to the post-colonial histories of African nations, Jennings also evokes the favelas of Brazil, the slums of Mexico City, and the impoverished neighborhoods of certain Caribbean islands. There are even intimations of North Korean dictators, with their "round" faces plastered on billboards and carved into marble. The story is very specific but its applications are universal.
Jennings expertly captures the feelings of resentment and mounting paranoia that ultimately lead to suspicion of "the other" and frank xenophobia; the greed and selfishness that cause otherwise considerate people to exclude neighbors and apply a toxic ours-versus-theirs mentality to objects and commodities that should belong to everyone.
There are one or two solid new discoveries on the Booker longlist each year and this is one of them for 2021.
While there are clear references to the post-colonial histories of African nations, Jennings also evokes the favelas of Brazil, the slums of Mexico City, and the impoverished neighborhoods of certain Caribbean islands. There are even intimations of North Korean dictators, with their "round" faces plastered on billboards and carved into marble. The story is very specific but its applications are universal.
Jennings expertly captures the feelings of resentment and mounting paranoia that ultimately lead to suspicion of "the other" and frank xenophobia; the greed and selfishness that cause otherwise considerate people to exclude neighbors and apply a toxic ours-versus-theirs mentality to objects and commodities that should belong to everyone.
There are one or two solid new discoveries on the Booker longlist each year and this is one of them for 2021.
August 19, 2021
Booker Longlist Challenge (10/13)
AN ISLAND by Karen Jennings
The least known novel on the longlist, published by a micropress and having received very little attention before surprisingly appearing on the Booker longlist last month, Karen Jennings AN ISLAND is both an intimate story of contemplative and regretful longing of the past and a novel strongly within the tradition of post colonial literature, delving into the disappointments and sense of betrayal many felt toward the regimes that replace colonial rule.
Samuel is an elderly man operating the lighthouse on a secluded island in an unnamed African country. One day he discovers a near-dead man who has been washed up from a destroyed boat carrying refugees. Samuel rescues the man, who begins to recover and potentially poses a threat to Samuel. Unable to communicate with each other, Samuel's paranoia quickly takes over as he assumes the worst intensions from the man.
Through flashbacks, we quickly learn that Samuel's past continues to haunt him. His father had long campaigned and fought for his nation's independence from Western colonial rulers. Finally replaced, Samuel becomes disillusioned with the new dictator and engages in anti-government protests that result in him being imprisoned for years, losing his family, suffering greatly at the hands of interrogating guards eager to torture their subjects. The past has scarred Samuel and he cannot shake the anger he feels toward several acts of cowardice that led him down the path of prison and loneliness.
Jennings writes in a confident, spare prose, that manages to eloquently convey Samuel's sadness, his anger, his desire to rewrite his past mistakes, correct his past behaviour that left him with such shame. A slim novel, An Island manages to say so much about the lingering effects of defeated political struggle, through the very small life of a bit player in grand events, who nonetheless must carry the physical and emotional burden that these events have produced. A great novel.
AN ISLAND by Karen Jennings
The least known novel on the longlist, published by a micropress and having received very little attention before surprisingly appearing on the Booker longlist last month, Karen Jennings AN ISLAND is both an intimate story of contemplative and regretful longing of the past and a novel strongly within the tradition of post colonial literature, delving into the disappointments and sense of betrayal many felt toward the regimes that replace colonial rule.
Samuel is an elderly man operating the lighthouse on a secluded island in an unnamed African country. One day he discovers a near-dead man who has been washed up from a destroyed boat carrying refugees. Samuel rescues the man, who begins to recover and potentially poses a threat to Samuel. Unable to communicate with each other, Samuel's paranoia quickly takes over as he assumes the worst intensions from the man.
Through flashbacks, we quickly learn that Samuel's past continues to haunt him. His father had long campaigned and fought for his nation's independence from Western colonial rulers. Finally replaced, Samuel becomes disillusioned with the new dictator and engages in anti-government protests that result in him being imprisoned for years, losing his family, suffering greatly at the hands of interrogating guards eager to torture their subjects. The past has scarred Samuel and he cannot shake the anger he feels toward several acts of cowardice that led him down the path of prison and loneliness.
Jennings writes in a confident, spare prose, that manages to eloquently convey Samuel's sadness, his anger, his desire to rewrite his past mistakes, correct his past behaviour that left him with such shame. A slim novel, An Island manages to say so much about the lingering effects of defeated political struggle, through the very small life of a bit player in grand events, who nonetheless must carry the physical and emotional burden that these events have produced. A great novel.
September 3, 2021
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize
Over the course of four days, Samuel, a lonely lighthouse keeper on an island off the coast of an unnamed African nation, wades through his past as he confronts the encroaching present in the form of a washed up refugee on his shores.
In this allegorical novel, Karen Jennings examines freedom movements, nationalism and the ties we have to land. Nothing is as it seems, at first. And as Samuel slips in and out of memories, we see the effect his involvement in past political struggles has on his present state of mind.
The prose is simple and highly accessible. The story is straightforward but reveals itself in bits and pieces, letting the reader put it all together. And it comes to a sharp but effective conclusion, possibly the only plausible outcome for this story as Jennings tells it.
This is a book that will creep up on you, just as Samuel's suspicions begin to rise like the tides, until finally it crashes over you. The effects last longer than the moment of revelation; Jennings deftly shows the impact that violence and power have on a nation, through the eyes of one meek, isolated, and often unassuming individual.
Over the course of four days, Samuel, a lonely lighthouse keeper on an island off the coast of an unnamed African nation, wades through his past as he confronts the encroaching present in the form of a washed up refugee on his shores.
In this allegorical novel, Karen Jennings examines freedom movements, nationalism and the ties we have to land. Nothing is as it seems, at first. And as Samuel slips in and out of memories, we see the effect his involvement in past political struggles has on his present state of mind.
The prose is simple and highly accessible. The story is straightforward but reveals itself in bits and pieces, letting the reader put it all together. And it comes to a sharp but effective conclusion, possibly the only plausible outcome for this story as Jennings tells it.
This is a book that will creep up on you, just as Samuel's suspicions begin to rise like the tides, until finally it crashes over you. The effects last longer than the moment of revelation; Jennings deftly shows the impact that violence and power have on a nation, through the eyes of one meek, isolated, and often unassuming individual.
June 18, 2022
Reading this novel felt claustrophobic, and that would be ok if it felt like I was moving through a plot that was developing tension and/or a release of tension, but it felt a little one-note instead. It didn't help me love it that so much of the story is written as flashback. I admired the mastery of the prose. I would love to see Karen Jennings try a novel where she didn't keep quite as tight a stranglehold on the characters and action.
September 7, 2021
Set on an unnamed island off the coast of Africa, this book covers four days in the life of Samuel, a seventy-year-old lighthouse keeper, who discovers a refugee, at first thought to be dead, washed up on the shore. During the four days, Samuel remembers his past, which allows the story to cover the turbulent history of the African nation and its impact on Samuel’s life.
I am impressed by the amount of history covered in such a short work. We follow the succession of leadership from colonialism to a corrupt President to a dictator. Samuel’s life story is presented through memories. The refugee crisis is incorporated. In addition, the psychology of paranoia is explored. That’s a lot to pack into a book of less than 200 pages!
My attention never wavered. The downside is that it is bleak – not much joy to be found here. On the upside, Jennings succeeds in presenting an allegory for our times, depicting the desire to defend what is perceived as "ours" and struggle to embrace the “other.”
I am impressed by the amount of history covered in such a short work. We follow the succession of leadership from colonialism to a corrupt President to a dictator. Samuel’s life story is presented through memories. The refugee crisis is incorporated. In addition, the psychology of paranoia is explored. That’s a lot to pack into a book of less than 200 pages!
My attention never wavered. The downside is that it is bleak – not much joy to be found here. On the upside, Jennings succeeds in presenting an allegory for our times, depicting the desire to defend what is perceived as "ours" and struggle to embrace the “other.”
May 26, 2022
This little serrated blade of a novel perfectly illustrates how a skilled novelist can tell a small story, but wring much larger truths out of it. In 119 pages, Jennings said everything she needed to say. While the style would be best described as unobtrusive, it was the structure of the story that really made this a standout.
The book begins on the startling day that a man alone on his island is suddenly no longer alone, and that's all I'm going to say about the plot. We learn some things about this man, such as the extremely limited range of expectations poor people have, and how little it takes to make their day. Here is Samuel's illiterate father at the door of a man who can afford his own house:
I'm impressed by how many little tricks went into the plotting to generate the maximum amount of tension in very little time. If you can think of something that would scare you, she'll find a way to make it even scarier. But this isn't a horror novel. We are all shaped and scarred by our experiences, and nothing in the main character's background could prepare him for simple kindness. While the island serves as a convenient metaphor, it also allows the author to pare down the choices her characters have to the minimum, allowing us to think about more important things.
When Jennings does write something intended to sound writerly, she succeeds, in my opinion: "The weariness grew in him like a thing coming to life. A thing crawling through him and taking over his body."
This is a hard book to review because it is so compact that to describe anything in detail gives too much away. There's a lot here. I devoured this on a three-hour flight and felt like I'd survived something.
The book begins on the startling day that a man alone on his island is suddenly no longer alone, and that's all I'm going to say about the plot. We learn some things about this man, such as the extremely limited range of expectations poor people have, and how little it takes to make their day. Here is Samuel's illiterate father at the door of a man who can afford his own house:
Samuel's father hesitated, but then the man did something unexpected. He put the book aside, pages downward, on the cabinet. "Just like that," he would always mime in his retelling. "You see, he put the book down for me. Just like that, like it didn't matter at all that he was busy. It was like he believed I was more interesting."Such sly writing! By simply adding the words "he would always mime in his retelling," we learn that this was a turning point in the speaker's life, that this was really important to him. And it's heartbreaking that some people are so starved of respect that a simple gesture of paying attention can change someone's life.
I'm impressed by how many little tricks went into the plotting to generate the maximum amount of tension in very little time. If you can think of something that would scare you, she'll find a way to make it even scarier. But this isn't a horror novel. We are all shaped and scarred by our experiences, and nothing in the main character's background could prepare him for simple kindness. While the island serves as a convenient metaphor, it also allows the author to pare down the choices her characters have to the minimum, allowing us to think about more important things.
When Jennings does write something intended to sound writerly, she succeeds, in my opinion: "The weariness grew in him like a thing coming to life. A thing crawling through him and taking over his body."
This is a hard book to review because it is so compact that to describe anything in detail gives too much away. There's a lot here. I devoured this on a three-hour flight and felt like I'd survived something.
April 4, 2022
3.5, rounded up.
A fast-paced, well written. and often powerful allegory/fable - but yet the unrelenting bleakness and my inability to really relate to any of the characters kept me at arm's length throughout the story. And while the ending was entirely appropriate, I also found it disturbingly nihilistic.
I'm rather embarrassed to admit that another major problem I had with the book - and this is probably my own naivete/historical ignorance, and hopefully not just inherent white privilege/racism - but I was never QUITE sure of Samuel's racial character (which is never definitively stated, unless I missed it), or of some of the others. Initially, perhaps swayed by the author's own skin color, I assumed Samuel was a white South African. Then, when there was talk of Samuel's stand against colonialism, and his incarceration began to mirror that of Mandela, I said, ok, he's black.
When Lesi, his son, is born, though, it's stated that he comes out 'yellow', so even with his black African name, and his mother's presumed blackness, again I was confused. I guess I came to the conclusion that, yes, Samuel IS black, but that ambivalence/vacillation throughout skewed how I viewed the book, as I couldn't determine exactly what the author was trying to say.
Still, another strong contender in what is shaping up, in my opinion, to be one of the best Booker longlists in years - there have only been two of the 12 I've read so far, that I haven't cared for - and it is indicative of the quality of this year's writing that this is now ranked 8th in my list, even though I could certainly see it making the shortlist and perhaps even winning.
A fast-paced, well written. and often powerful allegory/fable - but yet the unrelenting bleakness and my inability to really relate to any of the characters kept me at arm's length throughout the story. And while the ending was entirely appropriate, I also found it disturbingly nihilistic.
I'm rather embarrassed to admit that another major problem I had with the book - and this is probably my own naivete/historical ignorance, and hopefully not just inherent white privilege/racism - but I was never QUITE sure of Samuel's racial character (which is never definitively stated, unless I missed it), or of some of the others. Initially, perhaps swayed by the author's own skin color, I assumed Samuel was a white South African. Then, when there was talk of Samuel's stand against colonialism, and his incarceration began to mirror that of Mandela, I said, ok, he's black.
When Lesi, his son, is born, though, it's stated that he comes out 'yellow', so even with his black African name, and his mother's presumed blackness, again I was confused. I guess I came to the conclusion that, yes, Samuel IS black, but that ambivalence/vacillation throughout skewed how I viewed the book, as I couldn't determine exactly what the author was trying to say.
Still, another strong contender in what is shaping up, in my opinion, to be one of the best Booker longlists in years - there have only been two of the 12 I've read so far, that I haven't cared for - and it is indicative of the quality of this year's writing that this is now ranked 8th in my list, even though I could certainly see it making the shortlist and perhaps even winning.
November 4, 2021
It was the first time that an oil drum had washed up on the scattered pebbles of the island shore. Other items had arrived over the years — ragged shirts, bits of rope, cracked lids from plastic lunchboxes, braids of synthetic material made to resemble hair. There had been bodies too, as there was today. The length of it stretched out beside the drum, one hand reaching forward as though to indicate that they had made the journey together and did not now wish to be parted.
An Island is a taut allegory on the post-colonial African experience: Samuel is a seventy-year-old lighthouse keeper living alone on an island off the coast of an African country, and over the quarter century that he has lived this hard-scrabble solitary existence, his only contact with the outside world has been with a fortnightly supply boat (which brings him the very basics for survival and castoffs from a charity shop), and with the refuse (bloated corpses included) that wash up on his shingled shores. Bone sore, slow moving, and stuck in his ingrained survival routines, Samuel’s agoraphobia and xenophobia are triggered when the latest body to wash up stirs with life. Is this strong-looking young man speaking an unknown language a refugee or a fugitive? Just what does Samuel owe to a stranger trespassing on his island? In a tense narrative, told over four days, Samuel will be flooded with memories of his life (and the unstable history of his country) that will explain to the reader why Samuel now finds himself balanced on the line between compassion and disdain.
While reading this — a short but impactful novel in which “an island” stands for “generic Africa” and Samuel stands for “generic African” — I found myself wondering just who author Karen Jennings is, discovering that she’s a white writer from South Africa who was a schoolgirl when Apartheid ended. I then found myself wondering if this was her story to tell, and noted that no one was really talking about that (certainly not in the way that Jeanine Cummings was roasted for American Dirt). And then I found an interview that confronts the question:
You are white and your characters in An Island are black. You are female and your main characters are male. Do you worry that you might be telling stories that are not yours, or is it the responsibility of the writer to try to see through the eyes of others?
This was something that concerned me greatly and still does. I imagine that there will be people who are angered and unhappy and will (possibly justifiably) accuse me of appropriation. What I tried my best to do was to treat the subjects in the book with care – that is partly why the refugee does not speak; I did not want to speak for him. In the end, all of my writing is about trying to understand something. In this case, a large part of what I was attempting was to understand the complex history of Africa – a history made dark and even more complex by the shadow of colonialism. Where do I, as a white African in the present day, fit into that narrative? It is hard to say. This story is part of an ongoing attempt to find out where I belong within this space; it has never been about taking something for myself.
As a white Canadian reader, I honestly don’t know if wanting to support Own Voices necessarily invalidates a novel like this one, but as it was longlisted for the 2021 Man Booker Prize, as I assume this question was raised at a higher level than that from which I operate, I feel all I can do is acknowledge the debate and endeavor to balance my reading with more minority voices. Returning to An Island:
The man raised his eyes. The whites were yellow, the pupils unfocused. He spoke a word that Samuel did not understand, or perhaps had not heard correctly. He took a step forward and the man repeated it, holding out his hand as a beggar might do, as Samuel himself had done as a child with his sister when his family had been forced to move to the city. Then in middle age, his hands as arthritic as an old man from his twenty-three years in prison, he had been sent out begging again. But he had had no child as a prop, no benefit of youth to help him compete with the throngs of young men and women haunting the traffic lights at intersections. Meat on skewers, bananas, fried chicken, stuffed toys, wooden carvings. The lust for acquisition everywhere around him. Always someone hawking, someone buying, and all of it done amongst the traffic as bone-thin dogs dodged cars in search of refuse. The man motioned with his hand again, this time bringing it up to his mouth as one might do with a cup. He repeated the word.
Much of Samuel’s backstory, a familiar trajectory in the recent history of African countries, is hinted at in this passage: As a child, his family was chased from their farm by the colonisers, forced into the city’s slums where he and his baby sister spent their days begging to support their family. Their father got caught up in the Independence Movement, and although he was always proud that he and his countrymen’s efforts routed out the colonisers and installed their own President, this corrupt embezzler was soon ousted by his closest General in a military coup. Samuel himself got caught up in the People’s Faction against this Dictator (mostly to impress a girl), and when he attended an illegal protest rally, he found himself arrested and imprisoned for the next quarter century. When he was finally released, Samuel was disgusted to see that the wealth divide between the rich and poor had widened exponentially, and stunned by glitzy shopping malls, celebrity tabloids, and the sprawling slums, he took his inhospitable sister's advice to escape it all and became the island’s caretaker. Twenty-three years of only bimonthly contact with other humans, and then the man washes ashore, and Samuel doesn’t know what to make of him; his presence forcing the complicated memories of a lifetime to resurface in Samuel’s mind. When Samuel finds another body on the beach — a woman with her throat slit — after hearing from the resuppliers that a refugee boat had capsized off the coast of their country, he finds himself even less trusting of the stranger who made it clear that he hadn’t wanted to be discovered by them.
He did not like to leave her yet, and crouched unsteadily beside her, wishing he had a handkerchief or something to wrap around her throat and bind her wound. He thought of what was to come: of covering her with stones. He remembered again Big Ro’s burial, the stink of it. Two murders. Two murders, and Samuel the undertaker for both. What had he done, what could he have done about either of them? 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 loud. He turned his face towards the woman, bent down to her, said, “Violence.”
Less than two hundred pages, this is a short book, but Jennings’ writing gives the subject heft and an incredibly tense mood. This is the story of an individual, the story of a (representative) country, and asks interesting questions about the responsibility of decolonised people to refugees: How welcoming are a people expected to be when they fought this hard to chase off foreigners within living memory? What compassion can be expected from someone who has only known oppression? I found it interesting that the phrase “an island” isn’t found in a book with that title — Samuel only and ever refers to it as the island — so I’m left assuming that Jennings meant her title in the John Donne sense, as in: no man is an island entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent. And that’s probably how we should all be thinking about refugees, no matter our settings or histories. A really worthwhile read.
August 9, 2021
Not what I expected (in a good way). Crazy that Jennings struggled so badly to get this fine novel published. Reminded me of Diego Marani for some reason.
May 26, 2022
An Island is a powerful—and dark—exploration of both the refugee crisis and the ramifications of political repression. Author Karen Jennings explores these topics through two characters. Samuel lives in an unnamed African country, and has worked for decades as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island following twenty-five years spent as a political prisoner. Every so often, the bodies of drowned refugees wash up onto his island, where he buries them and continues his daily work. This novel opens when, for the first time, the refugee that washed up onto his island (and whose name we don't know) is not dead. The two men have no common language and Samuel swings between sympathy for the new arrival and paranoia regarding the man's intentions and potential for violence. I don't want to say more than that regarding the plot.
The book itself and the situations of the two characters are wrenching, and this isn't a title for those who prefer their fiction light. It will however productively challenge readers of decidedly not-light fiction and keep them thinking long after they've reading. If that's your kind of book, you'll want to get your hands on a copy of An Island.
I received a free electronic review copy of An Island from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
The book itself and the situations of the two characters are wrenching, and this isn't a title for those who prefer their fiction light. It will however productively challenge readers of decidedly not-light fiction and keep them thinking long after they've reading. If that's your kind of book, you'll want to get your hands on a copy of An Island.
I received a free electronic review copy of An Island from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
July 30, 2021
The cover to the book is interesting here (I’m referring to the Holland House edition, not the Karavan Press) as it shows an island in the shape of a man’s head. Any time you put the idea of “island” and “man” next to one another, people are going to think about Donne’s famous quote that starts “No man is an island…”. Given the content of the novel, this must be the intention here, I think. There’s also the fact that the book is called “An Island” rather than, say, “The Island”. Although this is probably due to other themes explored in the book like anonymity, it again, at least to me, suggested Donne’s quote.
A lot of this novel addresses the question of what happens to a man when he lives not just on but as an island for a prolonged period. Samuel, our narrator, is a lighthouse keeper and the only inhabitant of an island. He sees a couple of men on a regular but infrequent basis when they bring supplies, but his only other human contact is with the bodies that occasionally wash up on the shores of the island. That is, until one of the corpses turns out to be still alive. The novel is four days that these two men then spend together.
There’s a lot about isolation in the novel. Nearly all the quotes I highlighted as I read refer to someone living in some form of forced isolation. Indeed, the other cover to the book is a picture of a chicken and this comes from Samuel keeping chickens on the island and one of those chickens being isolated, and occasionally attacked, by the others.
Flashbacks throughout the novel fill in details of Samuel’s life leading up to his time on the island. He lived in an unnamed African country that fought for independence but was then taken over by a dictator. Samuel’s experience was horrific but we begin to see that a man’s past, his roots, can never be left behind and even when he lives as an island he carries that with him.
This is a novel filled with foreboding. It carries tension within it because it is actually quite uneventful for the most part, but there is always a sense that things could spiral out of control.
I think my reading of this book suffered from the fact that I have read so many depressing books recently and this is another one to add to that list. I really need to read something a bit more cheerful, but I don’t sense that the Booker longlist is going to help with that. This is without doubt a well written book and it is relatively short, but it is also dark and bleak.
3.5 stars rounded down for now to help me rank it alongside other Booker candidates. This might increase if I re-read the book at a time when I wasn't being depressed by so many books I read.
A lot of this novel addresses the question of what happens to a man when he lives not just on but as an island for a prolonged period. Samuel, our narrator, is a lighthouse keeper and the only inhabitant of an island. He sees a couple of men on a regular but infrequent basis when they bring supplies, but his only other human contact is with the bodies that occasionally wash up on the shores of the island. That is, until one of the corpses turns out to be still alive. The novel is four days that these two men then spend together.
There’s a lot about isolation in the novel. Nearly all the quotes I highlighted as I read refer to someone living in some form of forced isolation. Indeed, the other cover to the book is a picture of a chicken and this comes from Samuel keeping chickens on the island and one of those chickens being isolated, and occasionally attacked, by the others.
Flashbacks throughout the novel fill in details of Samuel’s life leading up to his time on the island. He lived in an unnamed African country that fought for independence but was then taken over by a dictator. Samuel’s experience was horrific but we begin to see that a man’s past, his roots, can never be left behind and even when he lives as an island he carries that with him.
This is a novel filled with foreboding. It carries tension within it because it is actually quite uneventful for the most part, but there is always a sense that things could spiral out of control.
I think my reading of this book suffered from the fact that I have read so many depressing books recently and this is another one to add to that list. I really need to read something a bit more cheerful, but I don’t sense that the Booker longlist is going to help with that. This is without doubt a well written book and it is relatively short, but it is also dark and bleak.
3.5 stars rounded down for now to help me rank it alongside other Booker candidates. This might increase if I re-read the book at a time when I wasn't being depressed by so many books I read.
August 29, 2021
The first time I read about this book after its placement on this year's Booker Prize longlist, I knew I had to have it, and I absolutely knew within the first few pages of reading it that this was a book that I was going to love, given its subject matter. The surprise was just how very much it crawled under my skin.
It was the blurb that sold me on this book:
"... A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history..."
Samuel, in his seventies now, had been used to discovering bodies washing up on the island over the over the last twenty-three years he's been living there; this "young refugee" is the latest in a series of thirty-two "nameless, unclaimed others." At first, officials would come out to look for bodies, to "find all those who suffered under the Dictator" so that now the nation could "move forward," but as time went on and more bodies came to shore, officials brushed them off as possibly "another country's refugees," now unwanted. Samuel was told to do what he wanted with them; it was not the government's problem. This time around though, Samuel was surprised to find the man alive. Planning to send him back on the supply boat coming the next day, Samuel takes the man into his cottage, feeding him and giving him warm clothing, just waiting until "the island was his again." However, even though they don't speak the same language, the refugee panics at the sight of the supply boat before its arrival, and begs Samuel for help. Samuel recognizes something in that plea for help, and the other man is there, it seems, to stay. His presence there rekindles bits of Samuel's memory of his pre-island days; memories that were "things best forgotten now approaching as steadily as waves approach the shore." As more of his past is revealed, in the present he wavers between trust and paranoia toward the stranger, the latter growing steadily as he wonders about this man's true intentions.
To say too much more about this novel would be criminal; I will only reveal that even though this story is less than two hundred pages long, there is much to unpack here, including the upheavals in ordinary people's lives as they suffer through political strife and struggle, and the emotional and physical tolls that remain as a result. As the memories come back, so too does Samuel's awareness of the humiliation he'd suffered over the years, and he comes to the realization that this "land was his, always." Soon the presence of this outsider becomes untenable; this is Samuel's home, and no one will take it from him.
As bleak as this book is, as allegorical as it may be, it is a beautifully-written, insightful novel that begins rather quietly before readers are abruptly jolted back into the past, returned to the present, and jolted back again. I'm wondering if these interruptions are meant to somehow mirror Samuel's mind, as it is certain interactions between him and the stranger which cause these memories to come to him, something as simple as the sight of a flower that the other man has made from odd bits laying around Samuel's cottage. It can make for reading distraction, but Samuel's past has a direct connection to what will eventually happen in his present. I love the way the author set this all up, including the early foreshadowing that sets the atmosphere, and then the slowly-building drama that results from Samuel's somewhat broken memories of the past. And do pay attention to the red hen, although I won't say why. There's so much more, of course, but this is truly a novel to be experienced.
Don't let the short length of An Island fool you -- it is a powerhouse of a novel that even now, several days after finishing it, is still haunting me.
I'm recommending it to everyone I know.
It was the blurb that sold me on this book:
"... A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history..."
Samuel, in his seventies now, had been used to discovering bodies washing up on the island over the over the last twenty-three years he's been living there; this "young refugee" is the latest in a series of thirty-two "nameless, unclaimed others." At first, officials would come out to look for bodies, to "find all those who suffered under the Dictator" so that now the nation could "move forward," but as time went on and more bodies came to shore, officials brushed them off as possibly "another country's refugees," now unwanted. Samuel was told to do what he wanted with them; it was not the government's problem. This time around though, Samuel was surprised to find the man alive. Planning to send him back on the supply boat coming the next day, Samuel takes the man into his cottage, feeding him and giving him warm clothing, just waiting until "the island was his again." However, even though they don't speak the same language, the refugee panics at the sight of the supply boat before its arrival, and begs Samuel for help. Samuel recognizes something in that plea for help, and the other man is there, it seems, to stay. His presence there rekindles bits of Samuel's memory of his pre-island days; memories that were "things best forgotten now approaching as steadily as waves approach the shore." As more of his past is revealed, in the present he wavers between trust and paranoia toward the stranger, the latter growing steadily as he wonders about this man's true intentions.
To say too much more about this novel would be criminal; I will only reveal that even though this story is less than two hundred pages long, there is much to unpack here, including the upheavals in ordinary people's lives as they suffer through political strife and struggle, and the emotional and physical tolls that remain as a result. As the memories come back, so too does Samuel's awareness of the humiliation he'd suffered over the years, and he comes to the realization that this "land was his, always." Soon the presence of this outsider becomes untenable; this is Samuel's home, and no one will take it from him.
As bleak as this book is, as allegorical as it may be, it is a beautifully-written, insightful novel that begins rather quietly before readers are abruptly jolted back into the past, returned to the present, and jolted back again. I'm wondering if these interruptions are meant to somehow mirror Samuel's mind, as it is certain interactions between him and the stranger which cause these memories to come to him, something as simple as the sight of a flower that the other man has made from odd bits laying around Samuel's cottage. It can make for reading distraction, but Samuel's past has a direct connection to what will eventually happen in his present. I love the way the author set this all up, including the early foreshadowing that sets the atmosphere, and then the slowly-building drama that results from Samuel's somewhat broken memories of the past. And do pay attention to the red hen, although I won't say why. There's so much more, of course, but this is truly a novel to be experienced.
Don't let the short length of An Island fool you -- it is a powerhouse of a novel that even now, several days after finishing it, is still haunting me.
I'm recommending it to everyone I know.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 9, 2022
This story broke my heart.
Samuel has been the lightkeeper on an island for 23 years, living alone and never seeing anyone other than the two men who come on the supply boat every two weeks. He lives a frugal life, tending to the lighthouse, his chickens, and his garden, and doing daily battle with the island & the sea for control of his little piece of land. He is probably around 70 years old, though we aren't told that for certain, nor do we know exactly what year it is, though VCRs are old and smartphones are prevalent. The island could be almost anywhere, off the coast of any mainland that was formerly colonized and went through the agonizing throws of colonization, decolonization, independence, rebellion, and civil war.
The story unfolds over four days, beginning with the day that a body washes up on the shore. This is not a rare occurrence - in the 23 years Samuel has been on the island, 32 bodies have washed ashore, and he respectfully buries each of them beneath a stone cairn. But this body turns out to be not yet dead. Rather it is a man, who does not look like Samuel and does not speak Samuel's language. The presence of this man in Samuel's otherwise solitary world evokes memories of Samuel's life. To say more would reveal the story, which everyone should read for themselves.
I did not know of the author Karen Jennings before reading this book, but I will be seeking her out going forward.
Samuel has been the lightkeeper on an island for 23 years, living alone and never seeing anyone other than the two men who come on the supply boat every two weeks. He lives a frugal life, tending to the lighthouse, his chickens, and his garden, and doing daily battle with the island & the sea for control of his little piece of land. He is probably around 70 years old, though we aren't told that for certain, nor do we know exactly what year it is, though VCRs are old and smartphones are prevalent. The island could be almost anywhere, off the coast of any mainland that was formerly colonized and went through the agonizing throws of colonization, decolonization, independence, rebellion, and civil war.
The story unfolds over four days, beginning with the day that a body washes up on the shore. This is not a rare occurrence - in the 23 years Samuel has been on the island, 32 bodies have washed ashore, and he respectfully buries each of them beneath a stone cairn. But this body turns out to be not yet dead. Rather it is a man, who does not look like Samuel and does not speak Samuel's language. The presence of this man in Samuel's otherwise solitary world evokes memories of Samuel's life. To say more would reveal the story, which everyone should read for themselves.
I did not know of the author Karen Jennings before reading this book, but I will be seeking her out going forward.
February 18, 2022
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize
3.5, rounded down. This is an unremittingly bleak novel about the scars of the postcolonial history of an unnamed African nation, which is credible more as realism than as allegory. Samuel is an elderly lighthouse keeper who saves a shipwrecked refugee, with whom he can only communicate non-verbally. Over four tense days that unfold at a thriller-ish pace, their mutual misperceptions, threats, and misperceptions of threats, slowly escalate, as both stake their exclusive claims to this tiny piece of land.
Meanwhile, Samuel's traumatic memories continually bob up to the surface: an early childhood in a village destroyed by colonial anti-insurgency campaigns, an impoverished youth on the streets of the capital, involvements with gangs and revolutionary cells, a failed relationship that produced a lost child, a long prison term for pointlessly seditious activities, and two harsh and lonely decades of self-imposed exile on the island. Jennings vividly illustrates how a single life, and one ordinary man's sense of self and belonging, could be warped by the politics of a brutal dictatorship and its aftermath, into xenophobia and violence towards someone even more dispossessed than him.
Many thanks to Hogarth Press and Netgalley for giving me an electronic ARC of this in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
3.5, rounded down. This is an unremittingly bleak novel about the scars of the postcolonial history of an unnamed African nation, which is credible more as realism than as allegory. Samuel is an elderly lighthouse keeper who saves a shipwrecked refugee, with whom he can only communicate non-verbally. Over four tense days that unfold at a thriller-ish pace, their mutual misperceptions, threats, and misperceptions of threats, slowly escalate, as both stake their exclusive claims to this tiny piece of land.
Meanwhile, Samuel's traumatic memories continually bob up to the surface: an early childhood in a village destroyed by colonial anti-insurgency campaigns, an impoverished youth on the streets of the capital, involvements with gangs and revolutionary cells, a failed relationship that produced a lost child, a long prison term for pointlessly seditious activities, and two harsh and lonely decades of self-imposed exile on the island. Jennings vividly illustrates how a single life, and one ordinary man's sense of self and belonging, could be warped by the politics of a brutal dictatorship and its aftermath, into xenophobia and violence towards someone even more dispossessed than him.
Many thanks to Hogarth Press and Netgalley for giving me an electronic ARC of this in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
September 5, 2021
Samuel has spent the decades since his release from 25 yrs as a political prisoner, living a solitary life on an island tending to the lighthouse; when a body washes ashore, alive this time, of a young man who does not speak Samuel’s language, Samuel is thrown into crisis. As Samuel relives the years of violent revolutions in his unnamed country, remembering his cowardice and humiliations, his paranoia grows.
This political allegory is tightly written with slowly building tension. I highly recommend it and also recommend trying to read it in one sitting.
This political allegory is tightly written with slowly building tension. I highly recommend it and also recommend trying to read it in one sitting.
May 10, 2022
Easily my favorite from the 2021 Booker longlist. A lighthouse caretaker on an otherwise empty spare island finds a body washed up, a still living man. As we begin to get a sense of this place, we see the flickers of the caretaker's past. The adjectives dystopian, bleak, and ambiguous come mind. It‘s a terrific novel, tightly constructed, creating wonder and discomfort.
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22. An Island by Karen Jennings
published: 2020
format: 182-page paperback
acquired: November read: May 2-7 time reading: 4:41, 1.5 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: contemporary novel theme: Booker 2021
locations: an unidentified island off Africa
about the author: born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1982, the daughter of an Afrikaans mother and an English father; both of her parents were teachers. This book was written while she was living in Brazil.
-----------------------------------------------
22. An Island by Karen Jennings
published: 2020
format: 182-page paperback
acquired: November read: May 2-7 time reading: 4:41, 1.5 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: contemporary novel theme: Booker 2021
locations: an unidentified island off Africa
about the author: born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1982, the daughter of an Afrikaans mother and an English father; both of her parents were teachers. This book was written while she was living in Brazil.
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