The Colony opens with Mr Lloyd, a London artist, being transported to a Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) island in a hand-rowed currach, eschewing the more convenient passenger ferry. This attempt at immersing himself in the local customs results in the regurgitation of his breakfast. A rather innocuous episode, it could nevertheless be read as symbolic of much larger issues that erupt when one culture gate-crashes another: exploitation, dilution of indigenous identity, conflict — all of which are examined by Magee in this discomfiting narrative.

Lloyd is traveling to the nameless island in search of solitude and inspiration; the painter's imagination is freighted with clichés of "raw, rugged, violent beauty," conveying all the innocence — ignorance? — of the outsider. The island's undesignated status in the novel may itself be significant: It implies stolen identity ...