SEA CHANGES is a magnificent novel. Someone calls it "magisterial" and indeed, that it is. It is magnificent for its literary accomplishment, all the many characters rounded and richly understood, the description of places and deeds surpassingly keen and affecting. It is magisterial in its authority over a complex theme, mass immigration, a theme as old as human history and as current as today's headlines. Derek Turner goes deep beneath the aggravated surface of this phenomenon which continues to disturb and plague both East and West.

A young Iraqi named Ibraham decides to leave the perilous (and "boring") world of hardship under Saddam with hopes of pursuing his fantasies of living in the West, in England, most especially in London. The story of his journey, in which he poses as a refugee, is told in intimate and harrowing detail, interrupted by lyrical passages when he finds himself alone and vulnerable, sometimes at sea or under cold dark skies, in some fleeting moments exhilerated by his new found "freedom," but most often suffering humiliation and torment. As he arrives in the West, he becomes the sole survivor of the villainous and murderous actions of human traffickers, and then he is at the center of a fenzied political and media storm. Also ensnared in the uproar is a different sort of hero, a plain-spoken English farmer, victimized at the hands of the media for politically-incorrect utterances about foreigners. Mr. Turner portrays all of the stakeholders in this immigration tempest with nuance and, wherever deserved, unremitting satire.

I read this beautiful novel in three sittings, regretting that I had to take any breaks. The cosmos of mass immigration that is typically depicted in nonfiction reporting is here upended by Mr. Turner's stunning tale: one senses that his uncommon vision is the authentic portrayal of what happens when cultures and individuals meet and clash with other cultures and individuals on the winding path from Basra to London. In Mr. Turner's vision, hypocrisy abounds and there is victimization all around (except for the villains who traffic in and profit from lives traded for money). The story is finally one of the abandonment of traditions and civilities, the broken worlds of home, family and hearth, and the haunting disappearance of timeless rural landscapes and intact urban communities. Mr. Turner doesn't provide answers to what seems a nearly irrevocable passage to dissolution; instead he gives us a brilliant, compelling, unfailingly compassionate chronicle of what is happening in our world and what might well happen in the future.

I haven't even mentioned yet his rich and highly-praised mastery of the English language, or his uncanny familarity (whence?) with the fearsome waysides, crossings, waterways, jails, guards, thieves, petite bureaucracies, tribes, seducers, bullies, liars, crooks, fiends and all else that enriches the frenetic voyage in the first half of his novel. The scope of Mr. Turner's familiarity with officious Londoners of all types is a marvel. Seeing the universality of these types in our modern world is another notable gift of the novel. I have now read all three of Mr. Turner's wonderful novels within a month, each one different from the other, and I eagerly await his next.

My favourite novelist for many years has been Tom Wolfe (e.g., Bonfire of the Vanities). But Tom Wolfe is not going to last forever, and I keep wondering who in the next generations could possibly replace his piercing observational powers and wry sense of humour. Well, I believe Derek Turner could. His first novel, Sea Changes, gives us, along with a nicely gripping and ingenious plot having to do with immigration, a delectable snapshot of today's England with its demographic and cultural changes, and a delightful, satirical send-up of the "politically correct". Far from preaching, he thankfully encourages us to identify freely with the various opposing interests, freeing us to come to our own conclusions. This is a great book to give to your liberal friends especially if they actually read it: they will achieve insight and wisdom. Those of a more conservative bent will find it entertaining and very amusing -- but also conducive to thinking productively about political policies.

Sea Changes succeeds, admirably, because Turner's literary prowess actually forces the reader to make a conscious choice between turning the page, in order to continue with it's rousing narrative, and not turning it, in order to properly savor each richly described paragraph.

I'll admit that as an American I was unfamiliar with some of the deeper references and political shorthand, but the English lesson just made the experience richer as I followed the adventures of a young Iraqi man across continents, and the turmoil sparked by his tragic arrival upon a secluded English beach.

Novels like Sea Changes, that dare to address politically incorrect themes with such literary mastery are as rare as they are refreshing. Turner astutely blends humor and horror in a cautionary tale that draws attention to the dangers of substantial third-world immigration that may, sadly, also end up serving as a kind of obituary for the British Nation as we know it.

This book is extraordinary. It is a novel of ideas and a piercing examination of the self-loathing, self-doubt, and shallow restlessness of modern European civilization, but it is never a screed with cardboard characters. The different characters are limned with great sensitivity and insight, as are their interactions with evocatively-drawn landscapes. Turner writes like Houellebecq with his insight into the emptiness and confusion of modern life and the wearying and bewildering effect this has, even as it elevates a certain kind of deracinated opportunist. Turner writes like Orwell with his withering exposure of cant and of the soothing lies that are no less false for being oft repeated by the right sorts of persons.
There is so much insight here. It is a prophetic warning, but one leavened with real feeling and sympathy for most of the people caught up in events in a Britain that, to quote the novel, is "both intimately familiar and deeply strange."
I hope this book will find the larger audience it deserves.

“Sea Changes” is a prescient foretelling of the politically charged and catastrophic events that have enwrapped Europe in 2015. Derek Turner’s book, published in 2012, is a fictional account of an Iraqi man in search of economic opportunity paying his way through a series of smuggling networks that take him through Turkey, Greece and the Netherlands to a tragic landing on the English coast. I suspect that when the author took on the topic of his story he couldn’t have possibly imagined how events in 2015 would mirror and magnify his main character’s experience, by latest count, a millionfold. This book is written in rich descriptive prose, which does not demur when it comes to laying bare the smug contemporary cult of cultural relativism that grips our governments and media today. I highly recommend it.

The author is very talented and it's very well written! Fascinating plot and events that take place in all the European continent. Highly recommended!