The Tempest - Softcover

Sem-Sandberg, Steve

3.05

240 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571334512 ISBN 13: 9780571334513

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2019

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I should not have gone back to the island but did it all the same.

After many years away, Andreas returns to his childhood home on a small island off the Norwegian coast. He is there to sort through the belongings of his late foster father in their decaying old house, the Yellow Villa. But he soon finds himself overwhelmed with unexpected memories, and begins to uncover not only the shadowy history of the island, but the mysterious truth about his family's past ...

Rich in shimmering echoes from Shakespeare's play, Steve Sem-Sandberg's The Tempest is a hypnotic portrayal of the inherited guilt that seeps through generations, haunting an island overgrown with myths.

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Review:

Dark and wonderfully atmospheric ... What makes The Tempest truly special is the risks that Sem-Sandberg takes with narrative conventions, the way that his prose seems to break every rule in the creative writing handbook, and yet does so joyfully, recklessly and utterly convincingly. That such stylistic complexity is rendered in a manner that feels entirely natural is testimony to the great skill of the translator, Anna Paterson ... It's as if the book's most significant borrowing from Shakespeare's play is not the island setting, but rather Prospero's total control of narrative, the omnipotence of the author-magician. (Alex Preston Spectator)

Peels back layers of secrecy, evasion and guilt ... Captures the relentless, dark dream-flow of Andreas's thoughts in simple, lucid prose ... There are echoes of Shakespeare's play in this Tempest. But themes of forgiveness and repentance aren't so obvious here; the lingering shadows of complicity remain dense and murky. (The Times)

Sinister mysteries thicken and swirl like the island's mist as this densely atmospheric novel progresses, culminating in a conclusion that avoids easy answers. (Daily Mail)

With faint echos of Shakespeare's play, this is a dark, elegant and skillfully constructed novel which vividly evokes its unusual setting. (Mail on Sunday)

'Ambitious.' (Sunday Times)

'Sem-Sandberg is a novelist determined to confront the worst of humanity. a gripping, disturbing book.' (Economist)

The book thrums with building intensity, the writing deceptive in its simplicity but with a hypnotic rhythm and cadence which echoes the novel's dreamlike exploration of the past, of the shadows which loom. With harmonies and discords to Shakespeare's play, it expresses the power of nature in its beauty and cruelty, how there are monsters which lurk within and how myth and legend build their own kind truth. Most of all it questions our own understanding of what has gone before: "That something is closely remembered does not always mean you recognise the reality of it." (Ruth Mckee Irish Times)

A dense and complex work of literray fiction with deliberate echoes of Shakespeare's play. As though some Prospero were shaping it behind the scenes. (Herald)

The story of Andreas Lehman's complex relationship with his sister . . . hypnotic. (Ystads Allehanda)

A small masterpiece. (Expressen)

Book Description:

This haunting new novel from Steve Sem-Sandberg, one of Europe's most celebrated writers, mesmerisingly exposes our own burdens of history.

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