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The Home of the Drowned

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Brought to you by Penguin.

FROM THE WINNER OF SWEDEN’S PRESTIGIOUS AUGUST PRIZE FOR BEST NON-FICTION

The powerful, haunting saga of a family of Sámi women fighting for their way of life in a changing world, when their summer settlement is flooded without warning

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.

Drawing on her own family’s history of forced relocation and violent colonial dispossession, Elin Anna Labba’s debut novel brings Sámi history to the fore. The Home of the Drowned reveals connections between land, water and people that hauntingly reverberate with the question: what is it that makes a home?

'Heartachingly beautiful' Lisa Ridzén, author of WHEN THE CRANES FLY SOUTH

Translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel

© Elin Anna Labba 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critics Review

The Home of the Drowned shines a light on Swedish colonial history. I felt this story bodily, as its three central women moved me between their resistance and adaptation - their anger and resignation - to land, finally, in a feeling of defencelessness. Elin Anna Labba's prose is like the rising waters of a dammed lake, slowly finding its way into every corner of my being. It is heart-achingly beautiful. The author is a master at conveying the importance of the individual in the fabric of the wider world. I can't recommend it enough
Lisa Ridzén, author of WHEN THE CRANES FLY SOUTH
With astonishing descriptive deftness, Elin Anna Labba leads us to walk with her into an un-drowned past, and a European history which will to many of us be shockingly new. In this story of the struggle of a family of Sámi women, and the brutalisation of indigenous people by the machine of so-called progress, the great saga of humanity seems mystically encoded. We are shown what has been lost, what can still be saved, and the depth of inner strength that is mustered to strive against power when it can no longer see its own soul. With the heft of myth and the urgency of activism, this book is a clear-eyed portal into a world of wonder, injustice, resilience, and hope, studded with the living language of a culture that has suffered much and refused to drown
Damian Le Bas, author of THE DROWNED PLACES
A sinuous, stunning novel – a lamentation that is also rich in razor-sharp, sensual details
Expressen
Sang in a dirty realism that smells of smoke, whitefish… As if written in water
Sveriges Television
Mesmerising… beautiful in a way that is also painful
Göteborgs-Posten
A magnificent debut
Upsala Nya Tidning
Author Elin Anna Labba
Narrator Kaisa Hammarlund
Duration 9 hours and 28 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529975406
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Fiction in translation, Generational sagas, Historical fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Displacement, exile, migration, Narrative theme: Environmental issues
Availability AU, GB, IE

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