The Swimmers

Description

A claustrophobic, literary dystopia set in the hot, luscious landscape of Andalusia from the author of The Golden Key. After the ravages of global warming, this is place of deep jungles, strange animals, and new taxonomies. Social inequality has ravaged society, now divided into surface dwellers and people who live in the Upper Settlement, a ring perched at the edge of the planet's atmosphere. Within the surface dwellers, further divisions occur: the techies are old families, connected to the engineer tradition, builders of the Barrier, a huge wall that keeps the plastic-polluted Ocean away. They possess a much higher status than the beanies, their servants. The novel opens after the Delivery Act has decreed all surface humans are 'equal'. Narrated by Pearl, a young techie with a thread of shuvani blood, she navigates the complex social hierarchies and monstrous, ever-changing landscape. But a radical attack close to home forces her to question what she knew about herself and the world around her.

Marian Womack, author of The Golden Key, was born in Andalusia and educated in the UK. Her debut short story collection, Lost Objects (Luna Press, 2018) was shortlisted for two BSFA awards and one BFA award. She is a graduate of the Clarion Writers' Workshop, and she holds degrees from Oxford and Cambridge universities. She writes at the intersection between weird and gothic fiction, and her stories normally deal with strange landscapes, ghostly encounters, or uncanny transformations. Marian lives in Cambridge, at the edge of the Fens, with her husband, their son and two aging Spanish cats. When she is not writing she can be found working as an academic librarian, or editing books and pamphlets in her indie publishing project, Calque Press.

Praise for The Swimmers "A meticulously detailed novel set in a vivid, believable eco-dystopia... Womack draws in readers immediately with her dreamy depictions of the landscape and its dangers. At its heart, however, the novel is a probing examination of cultural and class differences. Readers will be captivated." - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "A richly imagined eco-gothic tale." - The Guardian "Exquisitely realised." - The Times, 10 Best SF Books of 2021 For Annihilation fans, the prose is fluid & gorgeously intimate. The questions of our future-a sea of plastic/the intersection of class & climate change-are explored on a tender, personal scale. G.V. Anderson Womack has an eye for both the beauty and the horror of the natural world. Like a strange fever dream, the world of The Swimmers is uncanny and unfamiliar, wonderfully compelling and utterly inescapable. One of my favourite books of the year. Helen Marshall Jane Eyre meets Annihilation in this ingenious, bewitching novel. The prose is as lush and terrifying as the warped jungle Earth has become. This is speculative fiction at its best: thought-provoking, riveting, and gorgeously told. Jennie Melamed Womack is an exciting and endlessly inventive writer. I look forward to reading everything she writes. Naomi Booth Womack is a wonderful writer, and The Swimmers is a marvellous, heartbreaking exploration of the world we are busy creating, and the world we must then inhabit. Aliya Whiteley Praise for The Golden Key With hints of the brooding Gothic of Rawblood and Rebecca, this wonderfully creepy historical novel makes it absolutely clear that Marian Womack is a rising star. Tim Major An intriguing and unsettling tale. . . Womack brings a great sense of the uncanny to the Fens. Alison Littlewood The Golden Key mesmerizes... A beguiling mystery that lingers long after reading. Katherine Stansfield A fey, unsettling vision of Norfolk, and London, that fans of The Essex Serpent will love... This book gives up its secrets like a puzzle box. G.V. Anderson A fascinating, unsettling tale that shifts, mutates and changes meaning much like the eerie ruined house in the fens at the centre of this weird and brilliant debut novel. Lisa Tuttle Praise for Lost Objects Intriguing and illuminating... chockfull of interesting ideas about the natural world and ourselves. Jeff VanderMeer Marian Womack weaves together the lyricism of Angela Carter, the mad imagination of China Mieville, and the earthiness of Robert Macfarlane. Helen Marshall Luminous and disturbing as the unearthly things they describe, Marian Womack's gorgeously written tales map the shifting boundaries between waking life and dream, past and future and our own profoundly unsettled present. Reading them left me with goosebumps, and the craving for more stories by this supremely gifted new writer. Elizabeth Hand