Literature and Fiction · Hardback

White Shadow

Norwegian title: Hvitt hav

Roy Jacobsen

This is the stand alone sequel to the successful novel The Unseen. White Shadow is a dramatic love story from the small island Barrøy in the year 1944–45. Ingrid thinks she is alone on the island, but experiences an unusual love affair in the course of several intense winter-weeks. In this novel Roy Jacobsen gives us a welcome reunion with the people of Barrøy. This time he unrolls an even bigger canvas as he delivers a powerful and eventful novel about a fateful year in Norwegian history.

‘Roy Jacobsen’s novel creates plot without sweeping gestures and effects. The unspoken dramas lie in the subtext of many of the utterances. Through the art of suggestion, the reader is constantly drawn into the underlying tension of the book, which is created through the interplay and exchanges between the novel’s protagonists. Few other contemporary Norwegian authors match him in living up to the Hemingwayesque motto of “show don’t tell”, using language that bears the stamp of the terse style of the sagas. It is masterly.’ Tønsbergs Blad 6/6

Great, great art from Roy Jacobsen ‘The only thing to be said about this book is that it is fantastic. Gripping. This is less to do with the novel’s story than the very way Roy Jacobsen has told it. He has a fantastic story to tell, true, but in another author’s hands it could easily have become a mess of sentimentality. In Jacobsen’s it has become great, great art.’ Fæderlandsvennen 6/6

Beautiful and brutal ‘He is the master of the coastal folk, Roy Jacobsen, a virtuoso, poetic portrayer of coastal culture – with its fish, boat crews and practical activities. (…) The novel is safe in the hands of a novelist who commands a wonderfully beautiful language and has a poetic power. The dialogue and the powerful expressions in local dialect create authenticity. The chapters and scene after scene are rounded off with elegance and finesse. Roy Jacobsen masters the short format. A joy for heart and soul.’ VG 6/6

‘Jacobsen’s poetic prose is well-tempered for the most part, and yet it is remarkably rich in precise, era-appropriate nouns. Among the novel’s most outstanding qualities is its capacity to fill the rooms of the empty houses on Barrøy with ghostly traces of the past.’ Morgenbladet

‘Roy Jacobsen is a true storyteller; with his capacity to give the reader both overview and detail in the same image – without losing perspective. (…) In White Ocean, life is portrayed with both beauty and brutality.’ Bergens Tidende 5/6