On the Island

The novel made it to the longlist of the 2021 Booker Prize. Samuel — a seventy-year-old lighthouse keeper and the only resident of a small island off the coast of an African country. He tends to his garden, lighthouse, and chickens, content with a modest life. The bodies of refugees often wash up on the island's shore. Samuel understands that the government does not care about these unfortunate people, so he buries them himself. But one day he discovers that one stranger is still alive. «Jennings paints a broad portrait of a grim childhood and the social conditions that made Samuel who he is. In the author's hands, the blows of fate and failures of this antihero acquire a textured authenticity that is hard to look away from. At every turn, he disappoints both himself and others. These disappointments pile up like the bodies he buries under the stones. This book can be compared to Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes. No summary of the plot can do justice to such a meticulously woven story, the strength of which lies in its thoughtful pacing and clear distribution of details». — Lydia Millet, reviewer for The New York Times