An Island (2021) by Karen Jennings

Book Review

An Island (2021)

by Karen Jennings

  An Island, by South African author Karen Jennings was a surprise on the 2021 Booker Prize Longlist.  A year later, it finally gets an American release courtesy Penguin Random House.  I'm surprised that we don't get more South African writers of literary fiction released in the United States since, it seems like it be hard NOT to write an interesting book about South Africa.  Unfortunately literary fiction is not exempt from the golden rule of the American culture-industrial complex:  Americans are mostly interested in other books about America.  Same goes for film and music.  In fact, a major preoccupation of people who work in the culture industry is finding cultural properties from outside America and either importing them directly or reworking them for an American audience.

  This book is about Samuel, a reclusive light house keeper living in an unnamed country that escaped colonialism only to succumb to a post-colonial dictatorship.  Jennings is careful to keep everything generic- there are no place names or culturally specific names that would allow the reader to peg Malcolm's experience to a specific place.  The same goes for race, though I found myself assuming that Malcolm was a black African.  Jennings is white and her choice to keep things vague also probably helped her avoid difficult questions related to her "right" to tell such a story. 

  Samuel's tedious day-to-day existence is jarred when a refugee washes up on his island- still alive. As he hides the refugee, he reflects on his live and the experiences that have led him to the island- a misspent youth, tangential involvement in post-independence protests and years in prison.  Jennings packs a lot into this short novel, only 224 pages, and like reading Coetzee, I was left with the impression that Jennings had created a small masterpiece.