Sea Now

Sea Now

by Eva Meijer

£12.99

The country is flooding. Every day the sea claims another kilometre of land. The prime minister holds a daily press conference. Scientists try to find an explanation, without success. Sheep drown in the fields, weighed down by their waterlogged fleeces. The museums are emptied of their valuable works. Some people stay. Most leave. Once the evacuation is complete, and the rest of the world is already moving on, a climate activist, a young poet and an oceanographer voyage across the new sea. They are drawn back into the heart of a changed nation, seeking what they have lost in the deluge.

240pp, paperback with flaps, £12.99
ISBN: 978-1-916806-06-1
Publication date: 21 October 2025

Press & Reviews

'Sea Now unfolds from both broad and intimate perspectives with a voice that, in Anne Thompson Melo’s translation, is delightful and terrifying in its simplicity [...] It isn’t just a human story, but one of overfished fishes learning not to be afraid; of shellfishes, birds, rabbits, and ‘sea-being’; of horses discovering that ‘what they mean by freedom [is] the seaweed that moves inside you’; of whether, like mussels and octopuses, ‘the sea dreams’... In its regard for other-than-human Earthlings, Sea Now joins Meijer’s rich oeuvre of novels and philosophical meditations on multispecies coexistence. One could read this novel as the story of two characters—the Netherlands and the sea—posing a question of each other: What am I? What and who is “the Netherlands”? What and who is “the sea”? The first question implicates uncomfortable stories of value: Who determines the status quo that decides who or what (a foreigner?, a painting?) deserves to be saved, who or what (a US-trained scientist?, the Dutch language?) would count as a loss? [...] Meijer’s prose, in Melo’s hands, flows quietly with a consistent bittersweetness, and the novel’s pervasively dreamlike quality underscores the true horror of this entirely realistic scenario.'
Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Asymptote

Praise for previous work

‘Convincing... entertaining and thought-provoking.’
The Guardian

‘Truly original... There’s a sense of birdlike lightness and agility about this episodic, elliptical novel.’ Daily Mail

‘The author’s fluid, seemingly weightless prose is perfectly matched to the birds she describes... will be a source of great pleasure for birders and readers alike.’ Country Life

About The Book

Author

Eva Meijer is a philosopher, visual artist, writer and singer- songwriter. Their fiction and non-fiction has been translated into over twenty languages. Since the publication of their first novel in 2011, their works have received numerous awards, including the Halewijnprijs honouring their oeuvre. Meijer's books have been met enthusiastically by the Dutch but also international press including reviews in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and New York Review of Books.

Translator

Anne Thompson Melo studied Dutch and German at Hull and wrote a PhD on GDR children’s literature whilst living in the GDR, Germany and Austria. Since then, she has worked as a commercial translator. She was longlisted for the John Dryden Translation Prize in 2022 and shortlisted for the Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation in 2023. Winning the 2024 Peirene Stevns Translation Prize gave her the opportunity to work on her first literary translation.

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