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Published Apr 2020
272 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
The sequel to the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted The Unseen by "A gifted writer, stylish, laconic and imaginative" (Paul Owen, TLS).
No one can be alone on an island...
But Ingrid is alone on Barry, the island that bears her name, while the war of her childhood has been replaced by a new more terrible war and Norway is under the Nazi boot. When the bodies from a bombed troopship begin to wash up on the shore, Ingrid cannot know that one will be alive and warm enough to erase a lifetime of loneliness. She cannot know what she will suffer in protecting her lover from the Germans and their Norwegian collaborators, nor the journey she will face, wrenched from her island once more, to return home. Or that, amid the suffering of war, among refugees fleeing famine and scorched-earth retreats, she will be given a gift whose value is beyond measure.
"Disarmingly plainspoken narration brings into sharp relief both individuals and a world in wartime crisis." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[V]ivid... In terse but lyrical prose, Jacobsen unfolds Ingrid's engaging and intimate story while evoking the devastating effects of WWII on refugees, citizens, and a stoic community of islanders. This series is one to invest in." - Publishers Weekly
"White Shadow retains many of The Unseen's pleasures, not least Jacobsen's clean, spare prose...a noble tribute to the human struggle for decency." - Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"An unsentimental story that combines the cosmic with bracing emotional austerity." - Daily Mail (UK)
"A powerful read." - Sunday Times (UK)
This information about White Shadow was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Roy Jacobsen has twice been nominated for the Nordic Council's Literary Award: for Seierherrene in 1991, and Frost in 2003, and in 2009 he was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Award for his novel The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles. The Unseen, the first in a bestselling historical series, was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017
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