On the Island

“My land is mine. I am the land.” Samuel is a seventy-year-old lighthouse keeper and the only resident on a small island off the coast of an African country. He tends his garden, his lighthouse, and his chickens, довольствуясь скромним життям. The bodies of refugees are often washed ashore on his island. Samuel understands that the government cares nothing for these unfortunate people, so he buries them himself. But one day he discovers that one stranger is still breathing. While saving the stranger, he feels a strange threat and sinks into memories of the past: about life, the struggle for his country’s independence and freedom—which he ultimately lost. He’s tormented by guilt and shame. In the presence of the stranger, Samuel begins to reflect—as he did in his youth—on what it means to own land and belong to it. What is it like to lose your home forever? The novel made the longlist for the 2021 Booker Prize. “Jennings sketches a portrait of a bleak childhood and the social conditions that made Samuel into what he is. In the author’s hands, the fates and failures of this antihero become richly convincing—so convincing it’s hard to look away. At every step he disappoints both himself and others. These disappointments stack up on one another like bodies he buries under stones. This book can be compared to Kobo Abe’s ‘Woman in the Dunes.’ No brief summary can do justice to such carefully woven storytelling—its power lies in its considered pace and precise distribution of details.” — Lydia Millet, reviewer for The New York Times