The Barroy Trilogy
1 primary work • 2 total works 3 total works planned
Book 1
Shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize - Shortlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award - "Even by his high standards, his magnificent new novel The Unseen is Jacobsen's finest to date, as blunt as it is subtle and is easily among the best books I have ever read." Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
Born on the Norwegian island that bears her name, Ingrid Barroy's world is circumscribed by storm-scoured rocks and the moods of the sea by which her family lives and dies. But her father dreams of building a quay that will end their isolation, and her mother longs for the island of her youth, and the country faces its own sea change: the advent of a modern world, and all its unpredictability and violence. Brilliantly translated into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, The Unseen is the first book in the Barroy Trilogy and a moving exploration of family, resilience, and fate.
The sequel to the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted The Unseen
"A gifted writer, stylish, laconic and imaginative" Paul Owen, TLS
"A beautiful sequel to The Unseen, set around the remote & unforgiving island of Barrøy during WWII. A note-perfect combination of taciturnity, austerity, passion and weather. Sublime" - Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul
No-one can be alone on an island . . .
But Ingrid is alone on Barrøy, the island that bears her name, while the war of her childhood has been replaced by a new more terrible war and Norway is under the Nazi boot.
When the bodies from a bombed troopship begin to wash up on the shore, Ingrid cannot know that one will be alive and warm enough to erase a lifetime of loneliness.
She cannot know what she will suffer in protecting her lover from the Germans and their Norwegian collaborators, nor the journey she will face, wrenched from her island once more, to return home.
Or that, amid the suffering of war, among refugees fleeing famine and scorched-earth retreats, she will be given a gift whose value is beyond measure.
Reviews for The Unseen
"Easily among the best books I have ever read" Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
"The Unseen is a blunt, brilliant book" Tom Graham, Guardian
"The Unseen is a towering achievement that would be a deserved Booker International winner" Charlie Connolly, New European
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw