Ingrid runs after him, but is stopped by an invisible hand and stands looking around, the whole island in one bite, the door that is thrown wide open up at the house and the boys coming out, each holding a slice of bread, they spot Lars and charge over the hill to cut him off, the smoke issuing from the chimney in short, lazy puffs, Barbro emerging and casting sceptical glances to the north and south, pacing towards the clothes rack and removing the garments hanging there so black in the vast silence, the kitchen window opening, Hanna’s face and her open mouth, shouting something to Barbro, Barbro turning and answering, it looks like a question, two questions, Ingrid sees it all, half in a daze, the first winter storm is on its way.

About the Contributors

Born in Oslo to a family that came from northern Norway, Roy Jacobsen has twice been nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literary Award. He is the author of more than fifteen novels and is a member of the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Award for his novel The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles. The Unseen, the first of three novels about Ingrid and her family, was a phenomenal bestseller in Norway and was shortlisted for the 2017 Booker International Prize and the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award.

Don Bartlett is the acclaimed translator of Karl Ove Knausgård’s auto-fictional sequence My Struggle, as well as of novels by Jo Nesbø and Per Petterson. He lives in Norfolk, England.

Don Shaw is a teacher of Danish and the author of the standard Danish–Thai/Thai–Danish dictionaries. He and Don Bartlett met in university and have collaborated on many translations from both Norwegian and Danish.

Biblioasis International Translation Series

General Editor: Stephen Henighan