Set on a small Norwegian island at the beginning of the twentieth century, The Unseen follows the Barrøy family as they build a life at the edge of the sea.

Their world is tiny in physical scale but enormous in pressures that control it. The boats, fish, storms, a telescope, a few rooms, a few bodies, all of it an interruption to their decision making. Roy Jacobsen writes with a stripped-back, almost elemental intensity. The novel is not showy, but it has that cold-water force of translated Scandinavian fiction.

It is sparse, exact, full of silence, and quietly brutal about dependence, inheritance and survival. One for readers who like landscape as fate, family as house as much as home, and novels where the drama is less “plot twist” and more “the weather has turned and everyone may die, but silently.”

Hardback edition, published by MacLehose Press in 2016. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw. Very good condition overall, with light shelf wear to the dust jacket and edges.