The Unseen

Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize • Shortlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award​ • "Even by his high standards, his magnificent new novel The Unseen is Jacobsen's finest to date, as blunt as it is subtle and is easily among the best books I have ever read."―Eileen Battersby, Irish Times Born on the Norwegian island that bears her name, Ingrid Barrøy’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 unpredictability and violence. Brilliantly translated into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, The Unseen is the first book in the Barrøy Chronicles and a moving exploration of family, resilience, and fate.