The Islanders

by Christopher Priest

The Islanders is set in the same "Dream Archipelago" as Priest's 1981 novel The Affirmation and short story collection The Dream Archipelago (1999), but unlike the previous books it is set primarily within the islands as a guidebook to them. It quickly becomes apparent that it shares with its predecessor the use of an unreliable narrator and though it portrays and describes a number of the exotic islands, the specific details, even names and locations, shift as the story is told and the reader catches glimpses of the true nature of the narrator.