Every summer, Inga, her mother Ravdna, and her Aunt nne travel west to their village on the lake. But the summer Inga 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, Ravdna decides to build a house on the lake to replace what was lost, becoming an unlikely activist. Meanwhile, nne’s health is in decline, and a concerned Inga 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 Sami 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?
