Martin Baldysz - Selected Title Author

What is your book about?

Beyond the Shallows is an intimate and sensory portrait of a young girl at a turning point in which both she and the society around her are undergoing a significant upheaval. Ingeborg’s childhood is fading into memory, and uncertainty about the future and new emotions loom over her. Ingeborg longs for a life beyond the protective sandbar that encircles the island, but there’s also another longing burning within her; is it a kindred spirit she finds in Olaug, who lives on the other side of the island, or is there something deeper and more profound between them, something that will make life together with the others on the island impossible? The book is about daring to either go your own way or to conform to the safety of the community.

What sets your book apart from others in the same genre/theme?

In a time without mobile phones and in a place without any phones, people and relationships emerge more distinctly. The strain of feeling like a stranger in a closed island community in the early sixties – where the direction one’s life takes is mostly predetermined from birth – is more burdensome and isolating than in today’s society. Thus, the core of the novel lies in the unspoken. This isn’t a historical novel meant to showcase another era; another era is used to shed light on us as human beings.

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