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.<

“An Island” by Karen Jennings was a Booker Prize Nominee Longlist in 2021. It’s clear why that honor was given to this book. This book is a very many layered book. The writing is clear and precise. It is, on the surface, a “simple” book, where the plot isn’t difficult to follow - an elderly man is a lighthouse keeper on an island and one day a refugee washes up and this follows their time together for four days. But in actuality the book covers many topics through flashbacks in the lighthouse keeper’s past. The topics of colonization, independence, refugees, and xenophobia are explored. All of that makes for a rather heavy and dark book. It’s written as an allegory and I have to admit struggling with that at times. When I, as a reader, stop and ask questions about what I’ve read sometimes that’s a good thing - but other times it becomes a distraction. For instance, I kept wondering “is X a symbol for something” (the falling down lighthouse, the chickens, the manure, knives) though anything can be interpreted that way. Although this is a short book (119 pages probably counts more as a novella) it packs a lot into those few pages. However, for me, this didn’t work as well as I had hoped. Something was missing - and I cannot figure out what it was. For instance, I foresaw the ending (maybe other reviewers did to) and how it was going to end. This didn’t spoil or ruin the book, but it just added to the overwhelming sense of darkness and depression when I ended the book. As I said, this was a multilayered book and there was probably something - if not a lot of somethings - I missed upon reading.

I want to thank @netgalley for the ARC of this book and the opportunity to review it.

It is a short book, but packs a big punch. Samuel lives alone on an island as a retired lighthouse keeper. He is from a neighboring African country that is rife with political turmoil. Often bodies wash up that are trying to escape. One day, a young man washes up on the Island. As Samuel tries to decide if he can trust this man, he flashes back to his time in his home country. The prose for this book is fantastic. It is a novel about trust and fear.