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An island : a novel / Karen Jennings.

by Jennings, Karen, 1982-

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Refugees -- Fiction.

Lighthouse keepers -- Fiction.

Loneliness -- Fiction.

Reminiscing -- Fiction.

Islands -- Fiction.

9780593446522 (hc)

1st [American] ed.

210 p. ; 19 cm.

Originally published in Great Britain by Holland House Books in 2020.

"Longlisted for the Booker Prize"--Container.

"Samuel has lived alone on a small island off the coast of an unnamed African country for more than two decades. He tends to his garden, his lighthouse, and his chickens, content with a solitary life. Routinely, the nameless bodies of refugees wash ashore, but Samuel -- who understands that the government only values certain lives, certain deaths -- always buries them himself. One day, though, he finds that one of these bodies is still breathing. As he nurses the stranger back to life, Samuel -- feeling unsettled and strangely threatened -- is soon swept up in memories of his former life as a political prisoner on the mainland: a life that saw his country exploited under colonial rule, followed by a period of revolution and a brief, hard-won independence, only for the cycle of suffering to continue under a cruel dictator. And he can't help but recall his own shameful role in that history. In this stranger's presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth: What does it mean to own land, or to belong to it? And what does it cost to have -- and lose -- a home? A timeless and gripping portrait of regret, fear, and the extraordinary stakes of companionship, An Island is a story as page-turning as it is profound."--Publisher.

Political fiction.

Psychological fiction.

Literary fiction.

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