The Tempest

Steve Sem-Sandberg, Anna Paterson

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780571334537
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• I should not have gone back…
• That something is closely remembered…
• It was Ebba Simonsen who called to…
• The island: it seemed as if it had always existed…
• I am not sure what I expected…
• After signing off, Johannes drove a…
• When did the decay set in…
• I often wondered what Minna remembered…
• It is raining. I stand near the…
• They meet up in the Simonsens’ house…
• In the old days, it happened sometimes…
• The Dead House: this was…
• We ate oranges, crammed slivers…
• We had our own inner spaces…
• I have written that we went to school…
• Inventory, after the first five days spent…
• It is raining again. I stand at the edge…
• Odd how the island landscape…
• I spent days drifting along…
• Mina spent most of her time…
• For days afterwards, I behaved…
• And predictably, what I feared most…
• The attic is the only place in the house…
• I must have fallen asleep om the sidecar…
• Kaufmann died in January 1973…
• Minna went to a foster home…
• I make notes: this is the fifteenth…
• A first for this visit to the island…
• From now on, I take no risks.
• After just a few hours’ sleep…
• I stop in the hall. It is the place where…
• As I found out long ago…
• It was Johannes who transported the children…
• It has surely been less than an hour…
• Because I do not know when…
• So Minna returned to us…
• After the morning when the police…
• After meeting in trams over…
• I had asked Minna if she remembered…
• After Minna’s move away from the…
• She had been found floating lifeless…
• They would not let me see her for a long…
• I am not sure how long I can hold out here…
• But of course, you went anyway…
• And perhaps that is your big mistake:…
• You did not come home again…
• All those nights when Minna had gone…
• Dawn. The sirens of fire engines…
• About the Author
• Also by the Author
• Copyright