An Island: Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize

'An Island concerns itself with lives lived on the margins, through the story of a man who has exiled himself from the known world only to find himself called to the service of others, themselves exiled from the world by cruelty and circumstance. It is on these grounds that this writer deftly constructs a moving, transfixing novel of loss, political upheaval, history, identity, all rendered in majestic and extraordinary prose' BOOKER PRIZE JUDGES
'Jennings creates an artful balance between the tense claustrophobia of the island and Samuel’s backstory and subsequent self-loathing...An Island is a small but powerful book, with the reach of a more capacious work, compounding merciless political critique and allegory rendered in tender prose' Catherine Taylor, GUARDIAN


'A chewy, satisfying meal, with flavours worth waiting for' John Self, TIMES'Fiction at its most masterly ... AN ISLAND reveals the shifting sands of power and the persistence of inequality, even among the most wretched' Somak Ghoshal, MINT LOUNGE ‘Karen Jennings...is showing all the signs that she is destined for the kind of greatness achieved by Margaret Atwood, Nadine Gordimer or Jeanette Winterson...’ Karina Magdalena, CAPE TIMES
'A gripping, terrifying and unforgettable story' Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature, Oxford