The Islanders [Hardcover]

Christopher Priest (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2012

Reality is illusory and magical in the stunning new literary SF novel from the multiple award-winning author of The Prestige—for fans of Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell

 

A tale of murder, artistic rivalry, and literary trickery; a Chinese puzzle of a novel where nothing is quite what it seems; a narrator whose agenda is artful and subtle; a narrative that pulls you in and plays an elegant game with you. The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands. The names of the islands are different depending on who you talk to, their very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into vast musical instruments, others are home to lethal creatures, others the playground for high society. Hot winds blow across the archipelago and a war fought between two distant continents is played out across its waters. The Islanders serves both as an untrustworthy but enticing guide to the islands; an intriguing, multi-layered tale of a murder; and the suspect legacy of its appealing but definitely untrustworthy narrator. It shows Christopher Priest at the height of his powers and illustrates his undiminished power to dazzle.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Christopher Priest has long been the sort of author critics tend to whip out the serious descriptors for. . . . Judging only on the basis of this mesmeric travel guide to "an endless sprawl of lovely islands," I would not for a second hesitate to declare Priest a giant of the genre."  —Strange Horizons

"One of the most complex, challenging and satisfying fictions from one of our finest novelists."  —Telegraph

"Priest demonstrates once more his ability to surprise and dazzle with this twisty novel in which nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears."  —Library Journal 

"Entirely unforgettable."  —Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Christopher Priest's novels have built him an inimitable dual reputation as a contemporary novelist and a leading figure in modern SF and fantasy. His novel The Prestige is unique in winning both a major literary prize, The James Tait Black Award, and a major genre prize, The World Fantasy Award. It was also made into a 2006 Academy Award-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan. His other awards have included the Arthur C. Clarke Award and four Hugo nominations.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 342 pages
• Publisher: Gollancz; 1 edition (June 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575070048
• ISBN-13: 978-0575070042
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterfully thought-provoking and intelligent. September 28, 2011

By A. Whitehead TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The Dream Archipelago is a vast string of thousands of islands, wrapping themselves around the world between two great continents. Some of them are deserts, some are home to great cities and others have been riddled with tunnels and turned into gigantic musical instruments. The Islanders is a gazetteer to the islands...and a murder story. It's also a musing on the nature of art and the artists who make it.

The Islanders is Christopher Priest's first novel in almost a decade, a fact which itself makes it one of the most interesting books to be released this year. His previous novel, The Separation, a stimulating and layered book about alternate versions of WWII, was one of the very finest novels of the 2000s. True to expectations, Priest has returned with a fiercely intelligent book that works on multiple different levels and which rewards close, thoughtful reading.

The Islanders initially appears to be a travel gazetteer, a Lonely Planet guide to a place that doesn't exist. Several islands are presented with geographic information, notes on places of interest and thoughts on locations to visit. Then we get entries which are short stories (sometimes only tangentially involving the island the entry is named after), or exchanges of correspondence between people on different islands. One entry is a succession of court and police documents revolving around a murder, followed by an extract from a much-later-published book that exonerates the murderer. Later entries in the book seem to clarify what really happened in this case, but in the process open up more questions than are answered. Oh, a key figure the gazetteer references frequently is revealed to be dead, despite him having produced an introduction to the book (apparently after reading it). Maybe he faked his death. Or this is a newer edition with the old introduction left intact. Or something else has happened.

The Islanders defies easy categorisation. It's not a novel in the traditional sense but it has an over-arcing storyline. It isn't a collection of short stories either, though it does contain several distinct and self-contained narratives. It isn't a companion or guidebook, though readers of Priest's earlier novel The Affirmation or short story collection The Dream Archipelago will find rewards in using it as such. It is hugely metafictional in that themes, tropes and ideas that Priest has been working on for years recur and are explored: doppelgangers, twins, conflicted memories, magicians, performance art and shifting realities feature and are referenced. At several points Priest seems to be commenting about his own works rather than the imaginary ones written by a protagonist...until one of those books turns out to be called The Affirmation, the same title as one of Priest's earlier, best novels. A character's suggestion that a work be split into four sections and then experienced in reverse order may be a clue as to how the novel should be read...but may be a red herring. Several key moments of wry humour (The Islanders is probably Priest's funniest book) suggest that we shouldn't be taking the endeavour seriously. Moments of dark, psychological horror suggest we should.

The novel embraces its gazetteer format. References to another island in an entry may be a clue that a vital piece of information can be found in the corresponding chapter about the other island. Sometimes this is the case, sometimes it isn't. Recurring names (some of them possibly aliases) and references to tunnels and havens provide links that bind the book together. The strangest chapter appears to be divorced from the rest of the book altogether, but subtle clues suggest curious relationships with the rest of the book and indeed with other of Priest's works (though foreknowledge of these is not required). The interlinking tapestry of references, names and events forms a puzzle that the reader is invited to try to piece together, except that the pieces don't always fit together and indeed, some appear to be missing altogether.

The Islanders (*****) is a weird book. It's also funny, warm and smart. It's also cold, alienating and dark. It's certainly self-contradictory. The only thing I can say with certainty about it is that it is about islands and the people who live on them, and if there is a better, more thought-provoking and rewarding novel published this year I will be surprised. The book is available now in the UK and on import in the USA.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A subtle and inventive SF novel April 29, 2012

By Simone Oltolina

Format:Paperback

Christopher Priest is one of those authors that give a good name to genre fiction. So much so in fact that I've repeatedly seen his novels described as `literary Science Fiction', as opposed to, I guess, something like `commodity Science Fiction' or `throwaway SF'.

Priest has won a number of prizes, most recently the BSFA's (it was the fourth time, if memory serves). Still, he's so good that I wouldn't be surprised if his name popped up in something like the Man Booker's shortlist, alongside Murakami or David Mitchell.

`The Islanders' was a very surprising novel for me. It started out slowly and then it picked up steam, in a very subtle and inventive way.

It presents itself as a guidebook to an imaginary `Dream Archipelago', with a foreword written by the first among a long list of unreliable narrators. Each chapter is then devoted to just one island but don't expect your average travel writing. Some chapters are quasi-technical descriptions of the terrain, weather conditions and so forth while others are in fact about famous people who lived there. Others still will present court documents or take yet another form.

After a while you will start picking up clues and understand that, beneath it all, there is a plot or, in actual fact, several main ones (including a murder mystery) and a few minor: there are recurring characters, tales of ghosts, scientific experiments gone wrong, etc.

Some chapters act as self-contained short stores while others, as mentioned, evolve throughout the narration (sometimes there is not actual solution, with the mystery left hanging in the air...).

I used the word `inventive' and I think this is the most apt, but if you manage to get past the first chapters and start picking up signals, then you might want to add another one: `excellent'.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Refuting Donne - a weird, playful, mesmeric consciousness at work March 20, 2013

By Lady Fancifull

Format:Paperback

The subtitle of Christopher Priest's The Islanders `All men are islands' cocks a snook at Donne's `No Man is an Islande' which points out interconnectedness. Priest's supposed `gazetteer' of the islands of the Dream Archipelago both reinforces Donne and his own subtitle, which hints at the also truth of isolation, inward looking, self-reflective nature of islands and island dwellers

This is a book to mangle minds. Told by several unreliable narrators - including the writer himself, who turns out to have dedicated his book to one of his mysterious characters, and thereby does that `up yours' gesture to the reader who wonders how much the writer of the foreword, Chaster Kammeston, is, or is not, Priest himself - this book systematically pulls rugs out from under the readers' feet, up-ending and wickedly landing them on the floor.

Those familiar with Priest's writing will be no strangers to his ability to severely disorientate and deliberately unsettle the reader, turning his dream landscapes to nightmare, whisking what seemed safe ground away to reveal the yawning chasms of danger beneath. Echoes of his earlier works are scattered throughout the text. Indeed the islands themselves are part of Dream Archipelago, the title of a previous work. One of the islands is the island where lottery winners achieve, through medical science, immortality, and some of the island names as well come from that previous work

Set in what is probably a post-apocalypse near or parallel future of this world, (environmentalists are already predicting this could be nearer than we think) global warming has flooded most of the landscape, leaving 2 war torn major land masses and the long, divided chain of islands of The Dream Archipelago. Presented as a travelogue or guide to some of the major islands, which, according to Kammeston are idyllic, peaceful areas of neutrality outside the still warring land mass areas, where the arts, education and scientific research which benefits all are held in high regard, we quickly learn that much of what Kammeston claims can be disregarded. The `no man is an island' of Donne's view and the `all men are islands' of Priest's subtitle clash and weave together - the oppositions proving and disproving each other just like 2 of the major installation artists of the book are shown to do.

Nothing is as it seems here, Priest reworking some of his major preoccupations with illusion, sleight of hand, the conscious attempt to deceive of theatrical magic - the major focus of his earlier The Prestige.

To lay out more of the spells, the illusions, the darknesses and the oppositions Priest explores would be to spoil the new reader's own journey of dislocation and necessary obfuscation.

If you are unfamiliar with Priest's work, an excellent place to start is The Glamour (which is where I first encountered Priest) To describe him as an SF writer - as often happens - is not completely right. To my mind, he is a kind of English Borges, a philiosopher metaphysician with a scarily challenging mind and imagination. What I particularly appreciate in this book, is a sense of light touch and playfulness, leavening the darkness