*WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2020*

*A New Statesman Book of the Year*

A mesmerising, mysterious book . . . Haunting. Worrying. Beautiful Russell T. Davis

Brilliantly unsettling Olivia Laing

A magificent book Neil Gaiman

An extraordinary experience William Gibson

Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2020, this is fiction that pushes the boundaries of the novel form.

Shaw had a breakdown, but hes getting himself back together. He has a single room, a job on a decaying London barge, and an on-off affair with a doctors daughter called Victoria, who claims to have seen her first corpse at age thirteen.

Its not ideal, but its a life. Or it would be if Shaw hadnt got himself involved in a conspiracy theory that, on dark nights by the river, seems less and less theoretical...

Meanwhile, Victoria is up in the Midlands, renovating her dead mothers house, trying to make new friends. But what, exactly, happened to her mother? Why has the local waitress disappeared into a shallow pool in a field behind the house? And why is the town so obsessed with that old Victorian morality tale, The Water Babies?

As Shaw and Victoria struggle to maintain their relationship, the sunken lands are rising up again, unnoticed in the shadows around them.