The Black Isle

This extraordinary debut novel is a sweeping story of ghosts in the modern world and one woman's struggle to create her own destiny.

Anyone who has lived as long as I have, and who has done the things I have, knows there will come a reckoning...

Uprooted from her Shanghai childhood, young Cassandra is sent with her father and twin brother to live on the Black Isle. A teeming British colony in the Indonesian archipelago, the Isle is a seaport haunted by a restive multitude of ghosts...ghosts that Cassandra can see.

These spirits will face off against the forces of modernity, drawing Cassandra into the center of a turbulent struggle. Through it all, her strength and perseverance will be put to the test, as she endures the hope and heartache of an impossible love, even while she grows into a powerful figure of the Isle's transformation from colonial backwater to bustling cosmopolitan city.

Taking readers from the 1920's to the present day, from the Japanese occupation during World War II to the booming post-war period and the radical transformations of the 20th century, THE BLACK ISLE is a visionary and moving epic.

About the Author

Sandi Tan was born in Singapore. Upon graduating from the University of Kent in England, she became the film critic at Singapore's Straits Times, the largest English-language daily paper in Asia. She later left that job to pursue an MFA in film at Columbia University. Her short films have screened at New York's Museum of Modern Art and at 100 festivals around the world, as well as broadcast across Europe and Australia. Her original screenplays include 'Voodoo Kiss,' a zombie romance co-written with her husband, which was optioned by producer Edward R Pressman (American Psycho). She lives in Pasadena, California, with her husband, the writer John Powers and is at work on her second novel.