Description
The fourth installment in Roy Jacobsen’s bestselling Barrøy Chronicles.
After a long journey through Norway, Ingrid has finally returned to Barrøy. Life is more stable now, but the war still casts its long shadows across the country. Former collaborators face cold shoulders and retaliation, while others simply wish to leave the painful years in the past. When a boy arrives on the island and his father disappears, Ingrid assumes responsibility for the boy and adopts him. And so Mathias becomes a central part of the Barrøy community, together with Kaja, Ingrid’s daughter by birth.
Life on the island is demanding, but the letters from friends in Oslo and Trondheim tell of a Norwegian society undergoing dramatic changes. Which stories should Ingrid keep to herself, and which ones should she bring to light? What kind of future does she imagine—for herself, and for the children?
Praise for the Barrøy Chronicles
“Richer, even more provocative … The heroine of Roy Jacobsen’s White Shadow knows every inch of her home turf, a tiny island off the coast of northern Norway that her people have inhabited for generations.”
—Alida Becker, New York Times
“Disarmingly plainspoken narration brings into sharp relief both individuals and a world in wartime crisis.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Jacobson offers a portrait of a woman who is single-minded but not rigidly so, purposeful but not devoid of feeling … The intensity of feeling just beyond the actions described, and the effort itself of forging language to capture their evanescent reality, seems like a literary accomplishment in the family of more overtly ‘sophisticated’ novelists like Thomas Bernhard or W. G. Sebald.”
—Book Post
“The subtle translation, with its invented dialect, conveys a timeless, provincial voice … The Unseen is a blunt, brilliant book.”
—Financial Times
