The Unseen, Paperback

Shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize

Shortlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award

Islanders are never afraid, if they were, they wouldn't be able to live here. Born on the Norwegian island that bears her name, Ingrid Barr y'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 attendant unpredictability and violence. Brilliantly translated into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, The Unseen is a profoundly moving exploration of family, resilience, and fate.

Roy Jacobsen is a Norwegian novelist and short-story writer. Born in Oslo, he made his publishing d but in 1982 with the short-story collection Fangeliv (Prison Life), which won Tarjei Vesaas' debutantpris. He is winner of the prestigious Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and two of his novels have been nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize: Seierherrene (The Conquerors) in 1991 and Frost in 2004. The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles was published in Britain in 2008. Jacobsen lives in Oslo.