The Home of the Drowned - Elin Anna Labba

When their summer settlement is flooded without warning, a family of Sámi women must fight for their way of life in a changing world, in this powerful, haunting novel. Every summer, Ingá, her mother Rávdná, and her Aunt Ánne travel west to their village on the lake. But the summer Ingá is thirteen, they arrive to find their home and possessions have disappeared under water, the land flooded by a dam built to supply hydropower to a society that has continually stolen from them. The Home of the Drowned follows these women’s fortunes over forty years – from 1942 to 1982 – as the water their people have lived near for centuries is transformed into a menacing force that threatens all they hold dear. Defying the authorities, Rávdná decides to build a house on the lake to replace what was lost, becoming an unlikely activist. Meanwhile, Ánne’s health is in decline, and a concerned Ingá merely longs to live like everyone else – an impossible wish when the Swedish state is relentlessly drowning her world. Elin Anna Labba’s debut novel brings Sámi history to the fore, revealing connections between land, water and people that hauntingly reverberate with the question: what is it that makes a home? Translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel