The novel “The Islanders” by Christopher Priest was published for first the first time in 2011. It won the BSFA and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award as the best novel of the year. It’s part of the Dream Archipelago series.

The Dream Archipelago includes a large number of islands scattered across a vast territory, so much that the term archipelago is actually improper. The islands form a kind of federation that is neutral in the ongoing war but those regularly inhabited retain a large degree of autonomy.

Within the Dream Archipelago there are groups of islands with strong bonds, others are practically uninhabited and in the inhabited ones there are many languages ​​and cultures. You can see these differences also in various arts but tragic events such as the murder of an artist can be difficult to investigate when there are involved people from different islands with different cultures and languages.