BOOK LAUNCH: SEA NOW: Eva Meijer in conversation with Lucy Mercer

event for an exciting Dutch writer supported by Arts Council England and New Dutch Writing. ‘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?’ Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Asymptote ‘One of the unanticipated highlights of my reading year…a fabulist disaster novel, doubling as identity-of-the-nation commentary…playful, with a dry sly omniscient voice…a little bit as though Stephen Baxter’s Flood (2008) (or Japan Sinks) had been rewritten by Italo Calvino….the cumulative effect of this wide-ranging, generous narrative attention is a constant sense of motion, and a lightness of touch that allows Meijer to move smoothly from, say, haunting elegy to academic satire to a more serious intellectual point… Simply as a page-to-page reading experience, Sea Now is consistently fresh and interesting: You never quite know where its eye will fall next.’ Niall Harrison, Locus Housmans are very excited to welcome the celebrated writer, philosopher, and visual artist, Eva Meijer to the shop to launch her novel Sea Now, newly translated into English by Anne Thompson Melo. This work is a profound meditation on the relationship between the human and non-human and a biting satire of governmental ineptitude in the face of climate change. As the sea swallows a nation, the prime minister holds a daily press conference and scientists try to find an explanation, without success. A climate activist, a young poet, and an oceanographer journey across the new sea and return to confront all that has been lost, as a coming-of-age adventure story is braided with a clarion call to wake up to the defining challenge of our age. Eva will be joined in conversation by the poet and academic Lucy Mercer, author of Emblem (Prototype, 2022) and Afterlife (forthcoming from Fitzcarraldo Editions.) The two will talk for around 45 minutes to 1 hour followed by an open discussion. Our Speakers 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. Lucy Mercer‘s first collection Emblem (Prototype, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her nonfiction essay on wax and mortality, Afterlife, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions.