Islands have always attracted writers and readers as rich fictional microcosms. An island setting can be a paradise, retreat or prison, preserver of wilderness or tradition, test of survival skills. And the global malaise of climate change and Covid-19 may have intensified their allure because, in spite of rising oceans, island novels are springing up all over.
Just by chance, I have read three impressive examples recently: Audrey Magee’s The Colony, about an Irish-speaking island community during the Troubles; Norwegian Lars Mytting’s The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, partly set in Shetland, the Scottish islands where I have family roots; and now The Islands, a debut novel by Australian writer Emily Brugman.
