In Audrey Magee’s Booker longlisted novel, The Colony , the power struggle between two visitors to a small Irish island come to represent the complexities and consequences of colonisation.

The year is 1979. On the Irish mainland, Protestants and Catholics are being murdered and maimed in an escalation of the conflict known as “The Troubles”. On an island three miles into the Atlantic, the few remaining inhabitants hear of the atrocities via radio news bulletins. Sectarian conflict is not their principal issue however — their concerns are more down to earth. The island’s population is dwindling and their subsistence existence is reliant on income from fishing and occasional visitors

The Colonyl hinges on two of those visitors that summer. First to arrive is Mr Lloyd, an English painter from London, who is
looking to revive a career that’s in the doldrums. He sees himself as a modern day Gaugin, taking the art world by storm with his paintings of the natural beauty of the cliffs and the raw, unspoiled beauty of the islanders.

It’s immediately apparent that he’s a thoroughly disagreeable man. He could have taken a motorised boat to get to the island but instead insists on crossing by currach (a small wooden vessel) despite warnings that it will be a rough and uncomfortable journey. Why? Because he’s a man who wants his entire island experience to be “authentic” even if that means personal discomforts and deprivations.

Expecting solitude and quiet, he’s annoyed to find he will have to share the island with another visitor. The linguist Jean Pierre Masson (he prefers to be called JP) has stayed on the island for the last five summers, studying the patterns and evolution of the Gaelic language. Masson views the painter as a hostile force, one of those English imperialists responsible for repressing the Irish language. He fears Lloyd will compromise the integrity of his research by exposing the islanders, some of whom are monglot, towards the alien “English’” tongue.

They continually rub each other up the wrong way. Clashing first about petty things like who has the rights to the turf outside their cottages:
“Mine, Lloyd, for I was here first. The whole yard is mine. Always has been. And damn you, anyway. For being here. For intruding. […] An Englishman. In this, my final summer. He shouldn’t be here, not on this island, not in this yard, for this is my place, my retreat,…“

Further disagreements ensue, this time on the more profound issues of language and the rights of the islanders. It’s in these disagreements that The Colony‘s overarching theme of colonisation is at its most evident. It’s all comes down to the matter of exploitation and power — who has it and who does not — particularly when it comes to decisions about culture and identity.

Each man professes to be protecting the islanders and their traditional way of life. Lloyd promises in his first days that he will paint only the landscape but ends up exploiting the islanders, painting some of them without their knowledge or agreement. To him they are just means to secure artistic renown with a gallery exhibition at which he will finally get the accolades he believes he deserves.

Masson is just as exploitative though in a different way. There is a professorship riding on his research studies so it’s in his interest to ensure these islanders remain a bastion of Gaelic. He’s given a warm welcome by the islanders and they play along with his research (he does bring them some much needed money). Privately however they view him as yet another example of how they’ve been ordered around by “foreigners” who pay no regard to what they — the islanders — want. As one of the oldest inhabitants Bean Uí Fhloinn, indicates, they still possess a streak of rebellion.

“They take our land, she says, starve us and then to alleviate the poverty, to assuage their guilt, they set us up with knitting. Make jumpers this way and sell them, they said. Earn your living that way, they said. Earn your rent that way, they said, though, we liked earning our living the other way, from the land that was our land, the sea that was our sea. But they told us to knit, so now we knit. Well, I’m not knitting, says Bean Uí Fhloinn. Not that knitting. Their knitting. Their Scottish, English, Irish knitting. I’ll do my own knitting. Knit as my mother did. As my grandmother knitted. “

One of the elements I loved in The Colony was Magee’s use of multiple narrative voices. She gives the islanders distinct personalities and characteristics yet she also uses them as a form of Greek Chorus. One character speaks; another overhears and they then challenge the first speaker before picking up the narrative themselves. It’s a very effective way of showing multiple perspectives and enriching the whole narrative.

A thought-provoking novel that was one of my top 5 favourites of 2024.