A childless island is no island at all. Ingrid Marie Barroy has returned to the island that bears her name, bringing up her daughter with the other children that came with the war, who will someday raise their own children until an island that was empty is singing once more with life. And soon another will arrive, a child of the war and an orphan of the peace, whom Ingrid will fight to make her own, and whose interests may, in time, collide with those of certain others on the island, forcing her to make a choice she will long regret.

The sea brings the island all it has - herring for salting, eider ducks for down - but Ingrid knows, has always known, that one day it may wish to take something back. But until that day, she continues to live by one simple truth: There is no limit to what you can do with an island, the imagination sets the only limits, as with the sea.

Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw

'Taken together, Jacobsen has given us an epic of Norway's experience of the first half of the 20th century that is subtle and moving.' David Mills, Sunday Times

'Jacobsen can make almost anything catch the light . . .One of Norway's greatest writers on the working class.' Times Literary Supplement