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The Islands

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The Islands

By: Emily Brugman
Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
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A moving and original debut novel. Observant, warm and extraordinary.

'There is an other-worldly quality about the Abrolhos which is beyond the reach of ordinary storytelling. Emily Brugman has captured them, staked them to the page in all their isolation and aridity and scoured indifference, because her storytelling is extraordinary.' Jock Serong, bestselling author of Preservation

'Strongly felt, deeply felt, original.' Tegan Bennett Daylight

'Beautiful, fresh, wise and true - startlingly good.' - Robert Drewe, award-winning author of Whipbird


In the mid-1950s, a small group of Finnish migrants set up camp on Little Rat, a tiny island in an archipelago off the coast of Western Australia. The crayfishing industry is in its infancy, and the islands, haunted though they are by past shipwrecks, possess an indefinable allure.

Drawn here by tragedy, Onni Saari is soon hooked by the stark beauty of the landscape and the slivers of jutting coral onto which the crayfishers build their precarious huts. Could these reefs, teeming with the elusive and lucrative cray, hold the key to a good life?

The Islands is the sweeping story of the Saari family: Onni, an industrious and ambitious young man, grappling with the loss of a loved one; his wife Alva, quiet but stoic, seeking a sense of belonging between the ramshackle camps of the islands and the dusty suburban lots of the mainland; and their pensive daughter Hilda, who dreams of becoming the skipper of her own boat. As the Saari's try to build their future in Australia, their lives entwine with those of the fishing families of Little Rat, in myriad and unexpected ways.

A stunning, insightful story of a search for home.


'A beautiful, breathtaking, salty book about finding home on the far reaches of the continental shelf.' Marele Day, author of bestselling Lambs of God©2022 Emily Brugman (P)2022 W. F. Howes Ltd Contemporary Fiction Genre Fiction World Literature Fiction Tear-jerking
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I’ve listened to books narrated by Jen Vuletic before and like her work and I think there was substance to this book but I just never got into it. Maybe it was a book I had to read.

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I listened to this book as I traveled solo Perth-Geraldton-Sharkbay-Exmouth. It was wonderful to immerse myself in a story about the places I was travelling to.

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.