Description
The highly anticipated third novel in a historical series that began with International Booker-shortlisted The Unseen
The journey had taken on its own momentum, it had become an autonomous, independent entity, she was searching for love, and was still happily unaware that truth is the first casualty of peace.
The war is over, and Ingrid Barrøy leaves the island that shares her name to search for the father of her daughter. Alexander, the Russian POW who survived the sinking of the Rigel, has attempted to cross the mountains to Sweden, and now Ingrid follows, carrying their child in her arms, the girl’s dark eyes and a handwritten note her only mementoes of their relationship. Along the way she will encounter partisans and collaborators, refugees and deserters, sinners and servants in a country still bearing the scars of occupation—and before her journey’s end, she’ll be forced to ask herself how well she really knows the man she’s risking everything to find.
Preceded by the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Unseen and the critically acclaimed White Shadow, Eyes of the Rigel is an unforgettable odyssey and a captivating investigation of memory, guilt, and hope.
Praise for White Shadow
“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. To get a full sense of what it’s like to subsist on Barrøy and how 35-year-old Ingrid comes to be living there alone, it helps to read The Unseen, the first volume in Jacobsen’s trilogy, which has also been translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw. But even without that background, the novel’s account of Ingrid’s experience of World War II is unsettlingly easy to follow.”—New York Times
“White Shadow retains many of The Unseen’s pleasures, not least Jacobsen’s clean, spare prose . . . a noble tribute to the human struggle for decency.”—Daniel Marc Janes, Times Literary Supplement
“Disarmingly plainspoken narration brings into sharp relief both individuals and a world in wartime crisis.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A powerful read.”—David Mills, Sunday Times
“The turbulent outside world laps at weathered, ancient shores in Jacobsen’s stunning follow-up to The Unseen (one of the great unsung masterpieces of last year) … In this elegant, sparse novel, every moment is laden with significance as its denizens teeter between brutal memory and resilient hope. This is a book to be savored.”—Buzzfeed
Praise for The Unseen
“A profound interrogation of freedom and fate, as well as a fascinating portrait of a vanished time, written in prose as clear and washed clean as the world after a storm.”—The Guardian
“The subtle translation, with its invented dialect, conveys a timeless, provincial voice . . . The Unseen is a blunt, brilliant book.”—Financial Times
