An Island

A Novel

By: Karen Jennings

Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe

Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A “beautifully and sparingly constructed” (The New York Times) novel about a lighthouse keeper with a mysterious past, and the stranger who washes up on his shores—An Island is the American debut of a major voice in world literature.

“An Island by Karen Jennings is quite simply a revelation—a ferocious, swift chess game of a novel.”—Paul Yoon, author of Run Me to Earth

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vulture

Samuel has lived alone on an 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 strangely threatened—is soon swept up in memories of his former life as a political prisoner on the mainland. This was 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, terror, and the extraordinary stakes of companionship, An Island is a story as enthralling as it is profound.

©2022 Karen Jennings (P)2022 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Beautifully and sparingly constructed . . . In Jennings’s hands, this antihero’s enmeshment in his own failures has a textured credibility that’s hard to look away from. . . . No plot summary can do justice to a story woven this carefully, whose strength lies in its deliberate pacing and sharp dispensation of detail. Samuel is as real as a shaking hand.”—Lydia Millet, The New York Times

“A probing look at the roots of inhumanity and how the past can poison our compassion.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“An Island by Karen Jennings, is quite simply a revelation—a ferocious, swift chess game of a novel that urgently asks us: What will we be held responsible for in the end? This is a story of hauntings, of the unraveling of secrets and the self, and I couldn’t put it down.”—Paul Yoon, author of Run Me to Earth

Effects of Colonialism on the Lives of Innocents

My favorite read of 2022.

This story centers around the life of a man from the vantage point of his final days of life on an island off the coast of Africa. He, Jacob, is the sole inhabitant until a refugee washes up on the shore.

Jacob has lived a harrowing life and seen the rise and fall of the English and various dictators. Eventually he finds a job looking after a lighthouse and is at peace until he rescue the refugee.

It’s been a year of books about refugees winning major literary prizes. Arudpragasam A Passage North comes to mind.

I highly recommended An Island. A little too shot is my only complaint