Simon & Schuster Ltd
Under Water
Under Water
SKU:FIC0057
A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK
BBC CULTURE ‘BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026’
A VOGUE BEST DEBUT 2026
‘Compelling and heart wrenching, a remarkable debut’ Claire Messud
A stunning and deeply moving literary debut of grief, loss and female friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic natural events.
When six-year-old Marissa loses her mother, she is taken by her father to live on a small Thai island in the Andaman Sea. There, she forms a deep friendship with Arielle and together they explore the fragile wonders of its forests, reefs, and beaches. Holding their breath for minutes at a time, they learn to dive into the deep, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. Then, on Boxing Day 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami makes landfall, they are swept up by the first wave and separated.
Eight years later, Marissa is living in New York. She spends her days wandering through the city and her nights seeking solace in the beds of strangers. As the city prepares for a devastating storm, Marissa reflects on her past and learns how to sustain herself in a precarious world.
Under Water is a story about friendship and grief, but also ecological change and natural disasters. It is a meditation on loss, a tribute to our dying oceans and forests, and a love letter to the disappearing coral reefs.
‘A remarkable study of grief, set against the backdrop of ecological disaster.’ The New World ‘Books to Look Out for in 2026’
‘A beautifully written novel of grief, friendship and the natural world’ Mail on Sunday ‘Books to Look Out for in 2026’
Tara K. Menon is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Harvard University. She holds a BA in English from Columbia University and a MA, MPhil, and PhD in English from New York University. From 2019 to 2023 she was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She was born in India, grew up in Singapore, spent a decade in New York, and now works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Rights for her debut novel, Under Water, sold in 34 territories.
Her first academic monograph Speaking Parts: Conversation, Character, and Social Worlds, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in the Fall of 2026. Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The LARB, The Sewanee Review, The Point, Bookforum, The Paris Review, and Public Books, where she co-edits the Literary Fiction section.
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