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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

The highly anticipated sequel to International Booker and Dublin Impac Award-shortlisted The Unseen

No-one can be alone on an island . . . But Ingrid is alone on Barrøy, the island that bears her name, and the war of her childhood has been replaced by a new, more terrible present: the Nazi occupation of Norway. When the bodies from a bombed vessel carrying Russian prisoners of war begin to wash up on the shore, Ingrid can't know that one will not only be alive, but could be the answer to a lifetime of loneliness—nor can she imagine what suffering she will endure in hiding her lover from the German authorities, or the journey she will face, after being wrenched from her island as consequence for protecting him, to return home. Or especially that, surrounded by the horrors of battle, among refugees fleeing famine and scorched earth, she will receive a gift, the value of which is beyond measure.

The highly anticipated follow-up to Roy Jacobsen's International Booker and Dublin Impac Award-shortlisted The Unseen, a New York Times New and Noteworthy book, White Shadow is a vividly observed exploration of conflict, love, and human endurance.

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    • Kirkus

      Starred review from January 15, 2021
      The second novel in Jacobsen's Ingrid Barr�y trilogy is set during Norway's World War II occupation by Germany, telescoping the national predicament through the narrow lens of a solitary woman's experience. Seasons, representing both change and constancy, are again Jacobsen's central organizing principle, this time covering not generations but one year. A decade after The Unseen (2020) ended, most inhabitants of Barr�y, an island in a remote archipelago, have scattered. Only Ingrid, now 35, remains to follow an isolated, hand-to-mouth routine. Jacobsen built the earlier novel upon an accumulation of small daily moments, but Norway's German occupation offers more conventional drama. Germans are stationed on the main island, a hard boat ride away but within Ingrid's sight. In late autumn she is jolted when bodies in tattered, unrecognizable uniforms mysteriously turn up on Barr�y. One is barely alive. Ingrid nurses him and they become lovers in an intense idyll that can't last. Days after he escapes (with her help), she awakens in a faraway hospital room with no memory of what happened in the days since their farewell. With her doctor's help, she recovers shards of memory about a visit from a German officer and local police chief searching for her soldier, who was probably a Russian POW; but she resists remembering too much. Back on Barr�y by early winter, she is joined by her aunt Barbro, who intuits that Ingrid is pregnant. As more memories return, Ingrid worries the father might be one of the men who visited, but what happened with them is discussed only obliquely. This is minimalist fiction with a protagonist of impressive competence--traveling home on a whaler filled with ragged evacuees from Finland and Lapland, Ingrid takes charge of their care, then helps them settle on the main island--but with little interest in revealing herself. And yet Ingrid is a kind of magnet. Her doctor is attracted to her "intuitive" intelligence, as are the whaler's captain and several youthful evacuees who move to the island to fish and help Ingrid build a new house. Before long, Barr�y's former inhabitants also begin to trickle home, creating new dramas and possibilities. Disarmingly plainspoken narration brings into sharp relief both individuals and a world in wartime crisis.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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