POSTPONED: Litfest International Fiction Book Club — Roy Jacobsen: The Unseen

PLEASE NOTE: we regret to announce that this event has been postponed, and will be rescheduled in due course.

The author, Roy Jacobsen, was on a humanitarian mission to Lviv and has been held up at a border crossing on his return journey. We hope to rearrange this event for April, and will update attendees as soon as a confirmed date is in place.

For this special festival edition of the Litfest online book club we are delighted to welcome the acclaimed Norwegian writer Roy Jacobsen to discuss The Unseen, the first in his brilliant series of novels set on a tiny island in Norway.

Ingrid Barrøy is born on an island that bears her name – home for a single family, their livestock, their crops, their hopes and dreams. Her father dreams of building a quay that will connect them to the mainland, while her mother has her own dreams – more children, a smaller island, a different life – but there is one question Ingrid must never ask her.

Roy Jacobsen has twice been nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literary Award, and in 2009 was shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award for his novel The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles. The Unseen was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017.

The Litfest International Fiction Book Club was launched in April 2020 after Covid forced the cancellation of that year’s festival. Lars Mytting was our first guest and as the book club ends its third year, it is a happy coincidence that another Norwegian writer (see opposite) should be our guest for this special edition of the monthly Litfest International Fiction Book Club.

Since April 2020, we have discussed more than 30 books and been joined by many authors, including Delphine de Vigan, Daniel Kehlman, Andrey Kurkov, Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Geetanjali Shree, and translators, including Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Olga Tokarczuk), Margaret Jull Costa (Javier Marías), Carlos Rojas (Yan Lianke) and Frank Wynne (Alice Zeniter). For transcripts, introductory videos and a complete list of the books discussed so far see: www.litfest.org/international-fiction-book-club/

If you enjoy this session and would like to join the book club, please email Bill Swainson at [email protected] — ALL WELCOME!

The Litfest International Fiction Book Club is convened by Bill Swainson (Litfest) and Sam O’Donoghue (Lancaster University), and supported by the Fondation Jan Michalski