From the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of The Sentimentalists comes the story of a revolution on an imaginary island.
Reading Island is a searing, vertiginous experience. Hailing Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to interrogate our current moment in history, Skibsrud has created an uncanny and uncomfortable representation of power deeply corrupted. The text feels both historic and futuristic; it is discomfiting and necessary. Don’t look away. - Erin Wunker, Notes From a Feminist Killjoy
On an imaginary island, one whose socio-economic divide runs deep, an insurrection is brewing. Over the course of a day, the lives of two women–one a rebel, one a diplomat–will be forever changed.
Lota is a restless islander who works at a fish factory but is looking for a larger life. When she meets charismatic leader Kurtz, her life comes into sharp focus. Together, Kurtz’s group of misfits plot to overthrow the island’s occupying power. They plan to charge the embassy. They plan to capture O Com’s outer station–the gateway to the entire empire’s wireless operations. History does not–Kurtz urges her soldiers–have to repeat itself. As the past and future converge on this one day, a new world order is within reach. They cannot fail.
Rachel is an anxious diplomat who is counting down the final hours of her service on the island. Her family has fled to the capital after escalating racial tensions have put her daughter’s safety in jeopardy. She is eager to follow despite the fissures that are starting to show in her marriage. But when she arrives at the embassy and hears gunshots ringing through the corridors, she knows this is no ordinary day. As the hours lengthen and Rachel is held captive, she begins to wonder if she’ll ever see her loved ones again and what her complicity has meant as the sinister operations of her government start to surface.
Part fantasy, part parable, Island deftly explores essential questions of history and responsibility. It asks us to consider our legacies of cultural imperialism and the hidden costs of our wireless world. Urgent, illuminating, and thought-provoking, it asks us how we can imagine a future that does not run along the exact same lines as the past.
