Submergence [Import] [Hardcover]

J.M. Ledgard (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 22, 2011

The second novel by the author of the highly praised Giraffe.

In a room with no windows on the eastern coast of Africa, an Englishman, James More, is held captive by jihadist fighters. Posing as a water engineer to spy on al-Qaeda activity in the area, he now faces extreme privation, mock executions and forced marches through arid Somali badlands. Thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, Danielle Flinders, a biomathematician, prepares for a dive to the ocean floor to determine the extent and forms of life in the deep.

Both are drawn back, in their thoughts, to the Christmas of the previous year, and to a French hotel on the Atlantic coast, where a chance encounter on the beach led to an intense and enduring romance, now stretching across continents. For James, a descendant of Thomas More, his mind escapes to utopias, and fragments of his life and learning before his incarceration, now haunting him. Danny is drawn back to mythical and scientific origins and to the ocean: immense and otherworldly, a comfort and a threat.

Submergence is a love story, a meditation on mortality, and a vivid portrayal of man's place on Earth. With it J. M. Ledgard proves himself a writer of large horizons and vast ambition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An ambitious narrative that is stark, serene and contemplative...There is no disputing that Ledgard is an elegant, determinedly intellectual and disciplined writer, yet there is also immense humanity in this novel, which deserves to be one of the strongest challengers for this years' Man Booker Prize. It is the kind of novel that wins awards, and if it does so it will be because it deserves it...Here is an artist's novel that achieves the ultimate goal of any writer: it makes us pause and think, and think again." Irish Times "JM Ledgard's eclectic and philosophical novel ranges far wider than this latest manifestation of the 'war on terror'... Ledgard creates a prose poem of ideas and images that hops and flits with inspiration." Metro "Submergence succeeds, and is immensely pleasurable, because Ledgard's magnetic north - though incessantly insisted on - is such an uncanny, inhuman and deathly place." New Statesman "Submergence is frequently beautifully written, and ensnares the reader in a forceful, hard-driving narrative...If there's any justice in the world this novel will at least be nominated for a major literary award." The Scotsman "It's the only fiction I've read in the last few years that has left me open-mouthed." Word Magazine

About the Author

J. M. LEDGARD was born in 1968. He is a foreign correspondent for The Economist in Africa.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Jonathan Cape (August 22, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0224091379
• ISBN-13: 978-0224091374
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.8 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #440,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

J.M. Ledgard was born in the Shetland Islands. He is a political and war correspondent for the Economist and a thinker on risk and technology in emerging economies. He lives and works in Africa.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Submergence November 7, 2011

By axel48

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The problem with Jonathan Ledgard's new novel is that it has to meet an almost impossibly high standard. GIRAFFE, his first work, was a tour de force. Few debut novels have been as deeply affecting as this one. A certain trepidation regarding any follow-on is inevitable.

It is already becoming apparent that Mr. Ledgard has an uncanny ability to wrench us out of our comfort zone. SUBMERGENCE opens with a captivity scene that forces us to confront the claustrophobia and squalor of the political hostage in a way few of us could have imagined. It is real and visceral and nightmarish.

The book is an extended riff on a marine researcher and a British agent, part love affair, part juxtaposition between the closed world of a victim (constrained, closed, hopeless), and the open world of a scientist (vast, deep, full of promise).

This is a not novel that you can either put down, or forget. It is compelling in every respect. If, in the end, there is no resolution it is because the world offers no resolution. In short, this is a book you must read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Depth of Emotions May 15, 2012

By Askold

Format:Hardcover

Jonathan Ledgard's second novel, Submergence, demonstrates that his literary powers are growing at a strong pace. The book is a love story and a thrilling description of how its two protagonists deal with very different threats to their lives.

One is a British agent kidnapped by Islamic extremists in Somalia while the other is a marine scientist who explores the ocean depths with only the thin skin of a bathysphere between her and an instant, crushing annihilation.

The love affair begins in a romantic French hotel at Christmas on a snowy Atlantic coast. The hotel's exquisite setting is in stark contrast to the claustrophobic cell and scrub wasteland that form the backdrop to the British agent's ordeal and to the unforgivingly stern grasp of the vast ocean that is the scientist's obsession.

The kidnap victim is a distant relative of Thomas More and the astonishing intellectual explorations of that churchman-philosopher become a vital source of inspiration and diversion for the agent whose brutal captors threaten him with execution at any moment.

The marine scientist, unaware that her lover has been kidnapped, delves into her own edgy history as she sails to the dive point and begins the descent into the abyss.

Ledgard has chosen every word in the novel carefully like a gem specialist sifting for only the best stones for a monarch's crowns. He explores or touches upon diverse ideas that are all connected in a satisfying, enriching yet not always obvious way. Like all the impenetrable bodies of water that wash against the locations where the characters discover their love and then are forced confront the question of who they are when life could be extinguished imminently.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange particles December 27, 2011

By Scott MacMillan

Format:Hardcover

J.M . Ledgard's second novel is strange and disturbing, perhaps even more so than his first, which I feel confident saying contained the most harrowing giraffe slaughter sequence of modern English literature. This is a strange book from a strange man; I've met him and can confirm it, and I mean that in the best possible way. It is also dark and, one might argue, deeply pessimistic in terms of the future it suggests for humankind.

SUBMERGENCE is an account of James, a kidnapped British spy, and the slow disintegration of his will and consciousness among his jihadist captors in Somalia, coupled with the descent into the depths of the oceans on the part of Danielle, a marine biomathematician - of course she's a marine biomathematician; Ledgard's last protagonist was a giraffe haemodynamicist - where chemosynthetic life forms teem and luminesce in high-temperature thermal flows heated by the earth's magma.

Somewhere in there, in flashbacks, like particles in a chaotic system, this pair randomly bounced into one another in a French hotel on a raging Atlantic, made love on a bathroom sink, and decided, despite it being it an apparent mathematical impossible, that they had fallen in love. It was fleeting, as all things are. SUBMERGENCE scrapes topics that are difficult to write about without seeming precious, including djinns, Africa, and, without quite saying so, a sense of a dormant superconsciousness that lies below, precedes and outlasts all human activity and ritual - not to mention a civilization, one gets the sense, that the author sees as increasingly tenuous.