We live in a time where fiction has become reality. Jonathan Swift had to create a Giant named Gulliver and a fantasy land to poke fun at his day and age. Mr. Turner has cleverly created a black comedy tale and turned it into an entertaining novel. The story line centers on a society - the United Kingdom - that goes haywire over undocumented immigrants who wash up on the shores of the North Sea. Their arrival unleashes a torrent of abuse against locals who are overwhelmed by the national attention focused on their rural community and not prepared for the assault on their way of life that the news media and pandering politicians are all too quick to release on them. Turner is very successful in creating characters who you love or hate. He is particularly good at recreating the journey of a young Iraqi that ends in the United Kingdom (or so you think.), the farmer who becomes the butt of national condemnation, the journalist who campaigns for international human rights without displaying a shred of decency, and the columnist who is the defender of common sense.. This is a modern day romp that puts political correctness on trail in a must amusing way.

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.

The story is a little bit like Jean Raspail's CAMP OF THE SAINTS only less preachy. There are no monster children. The characters are sympathetic. Even the villains are not one-dimensional and some readers may not see them as villains at all. It is a novel about the death of Europe; a Europe where Europeans are in danger of becoming minorities in their own countries. Sadly, I've already written the UK off as a European country.

If you care at all about European culture, past, and future, you need to read this book. The writing quality is excellent and the character portrayals are sensitive and detailed. Caveat emptor: If you don't like Europeans, you won't enjoy this book.