An Island

“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

“Centuries of colonialism, post-colonialism, refugee crises, political upheavals: Rare is the author who can start with such complex material and relentlessly pare it back to its essentials, as Karen Jennings does. Beginning with the arrival of a stranger on Samuel’s island, and then over the course of four tense days, we feel the weight of each decision he makes, as well as the unease, the paranoia, the ever-present threat of violence. Humble may the characters be, and rocky and windswept their island, but even here, in such unseen places, are terrible battles played out. Honest and unflinching.”—Claire Adam, author of Golden Child

“Through carefully crafted prose and keen political observations, Karen Jennings’s An Island captures history and its consequences in a narrative of quiet violence, displacement, and isolation. This compact book carries the punch of a much larger work, and it does what a good book should: It compels the reader to read on and on until the end, and then to restart once more.”—Rémy Ngamije, author of The Eternal Audience of One
 
“Allegorical and yet profoundly concrete, An Island is an insightful meditation on the illusion of isolation and the possibility of redemption, gracefully told and terrifically moving.”—Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

“Jennings adroitly weaves Samuel’s painful past into a disquieting present and through her characters captures universal human truths.”—Booklist