As the first Norwegian author ever, Roy Jacobsen was earlier this year short-listed to the International MAN Booker Prize. He was nominated for the critically acclaimed novel The Unseen (De usynlige), launched in Norway in 2013.

Today The Unseen was also long-listed to the prestigious International DUBLIN Literature Award (earlier IMPAC).

This is the third time that Roy Jacobsen is nominated to this award. He has earlier been nominated for the novels Child Wonder (Vidunderbarn) in 2012 and The Burnt-out Town of Miracles (Hoggerne) in 2009.

The International DUBLIN Literature Award is awarded once a year to a novel published in English. The award was founded in 1996, and the winner is awarded €100,000.
Libraries from 37 countries and 111 cities name the books that have now been nominated. In April 2018 the short-list will be revealed, and the winner will be announced on June 13.

Roy Jacobsen had his big break through in 1991 with the novel The Victors, an epic tale that has been very widely read. He wrote about people of the working class getting out and up in the world.
In The Unseen he is back in the same environment that he describes in the first part of The Victors, an area he has known for all of his life. He writes about the coastal proletariat, and the action takes part on a small island far off the coast of Helgeland in the north of Norway in the years between 1913 and 1928. As the writer says it: “There where thousands of islands like this along the Norwegian coastline. Today there are none. They deserve to be seen.”

After publishing The Unseen, Roy Jacobsen has written the novels White Ocean and The Eyes of Rigel about the main character Ingrid Barrøy.

Roy Jacobsen has won a number of prizes and awards , and has been nominated to The Nordic Councils Literature Prize twice. The Unseen has a total print run of almost 200.000 books in Norway alone. The book has so far been sold to 23 countries. At total, Roy Jacobsen has been sold to almost 40 language areas.

The Unseen is translated into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw.

Read more about Roy Jacobsen and his books here.