The painting, by Sir William Orpen, dates from 1916, a significant year in Irish history since it marked the beginning of Ireland's final fight for freedom from its British colonisers—attained in 1922 (but only for three-quarters of the country, hence the 'Troubles' in the north of the country where the struggle for freedom was still going on in 1979). Among other things, Orpen's large canvas is a comment on the conflicting pagan and Christian elements in communities in the west of Ireland. The figure in the top left corner is a west of Ireland artist called Sean Keating wearing homespun clothes from the Aran Islands. Keating had been a protégé of Orpen's just as Magee's character James was of the English artist Lloyd—and James wore similar woolen clothing. The semi-naked woman in the foreground of the painting, seated with her arms raised, is almost exactly as Mairéad is described in some of Lloyd's preparatory sketches for his homage to Gauguin. The most tragic character in the book is James, the last of the young male islanders who dreams of escape but is pressured to continue the island’s traditions. Does he represent Ireland’s youth, and is there hope for him?

The Colony is brimming with ideas about identity and soul; a canny, challenging, and never less than engrossing read.” Between the longer sections of events taking place on the island, Magee intersperses short descriptions across the summer months in Northern Ireland of conflicts between various factions. These short chapters really highlight the amount of death that occurred during the Troubles, and in ways it propels the novel forward by causing the reader to anticipate some similar sort of violence or conflict on the island itself. On the small island, we meet one of only 12 families living there: Four generations, mainly consisting of three women and teenager James. James' father, uncle and grandfather were fishermen and have drowned, but these dead men keep haunting the family and the book: They are a lost past the women can't break free from. and the contrast to the Proustian recollections of his colonial rival Masson, a Frenchman, determined to save the islanders' language and their heritage, even if that isn't what they want, and hiding a secret of his own (that he betrayed his own linguistic and cultural heritage); As to winning, that would be a wonderful gift for The Colony, a novel that explores the societal controls around colonisation and their impact on language, art, violence and self-determination. I tell the story from an Irish perspective, but the narrative echoes the experiences of other countries around the world where there is a relationship or the legacy of a relationship between the colonised and the coloniser.The island is now largely denuded of population – and his main interactions are with one three generational family: the matriarch Bean Uí Néill, her daughter Mairéad (whose father, husband and brother all died in one fishing accident) and her son James (Séamas) Gillan; Francis (Mairéad’s husband’s brother – a fisherman on the mainland but still very influential on the island - who wants to take his dead brother’s place in her bed) and Mícheál (a trader and boatman). The first foreigner to arrive is English painter Lloyd, who stays as a tourist with the family and promises the matriarch that he will only paint nature, not the islanders - but of course he portrays the family, seeing himself as some kind of English Gauguin. Is he, the representative of the colonial power, here to submit the representation of island identity to the colonial eye, to exploit the Irish for his own glory as an artist? Not only that, he also makes promises to James, himself an aspiring artist who wants to avoid life as a fisherman at all costs. Audrey Magee paints her characters with a deceptively light touch and there is plenty of humour in the novel, but she has also created rounded individuals and doesn’t allow her any of them to become cliches, not even the elderly Bean Uí Fhloinn who may well sound familiar to anyone who studied the work of a certain pipe smoking Blasket Islander for the Leaving Cert. There is great joy in the paragraphs showing the islanders politely feeding the visitors and then heading off for a walk to discuss how they really feel, while a clever use of Irish phrases alongside the English translation gives the novel an authentic feel that won't alienate any reader.

A story about language and identity, about art, oppression, freedom and colonialism . . . A novel about big, important things.” I could see why the author chose that painting since the title sums up the dilemmas of the island community in 1979 when it was becoming more difficult to live completely cut off from progress as their ancestors had done—and as the Tahitians in Gauguin's painting of their paradise island life were trying to do. A really fascinating and distinctive fictional examination of the effects of colonization – ranging from artistic appropriation, through language (cleverly both external dialogue and internal monologue) to the legacy of violence.The 'Dark Rosaleen' poem I mentioned earlier was about Spanish ships coming to aid Rosaleen/Ireland in 1601 in the struggle against English dominance. It is a metaphor, yes; a metaphor for the island of Ireland, of course, but also a metaphorical distillation of the experiences of all countries colonised since the 15th century by Britain or other European nations. The prose is understated and beautiful, precise and measured without seeming too artificial. The occasional broken lines of stream-of-consciousness are quite effective, and Magee obviously has a great affection for the history and culture of the book’s setting. If we recall our Anglo-Irish history, we know that this particular year of the Troubles reached a bloody climax on 27 August, when the IRA bombed the fishing boat of Lord Mountbatten in the bay at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, killing or seriously injuring everyone aboard; on the same day, 18 British soldiers were killed by an IRA bomb at Warrenpoint, County Down. Catastrophe looms. Are these short inter-chapters offered merely as an oblique counterpoint to the story of Lloyd and the island? Or will the two strands of the novel in some way collide? As a student in Dublin, I worked in Waterstones. Booker time was an exciting time in the shop, tables piled high with nominated books. That my book is now longlisted and on those tables is beyond thrilling for me. It’s glorious.