Beneath the World, a Sea

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

'A disturbing descent into a surreal world, written with a deft hand.' - Adrian Tchaikovsky, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2016

South America, 1990. Ben Ronson, a British police officer, arrives in a mysterious forest to investigate a spate of killings of Duendes. These silent, vaguely humanoid creatures - with long limbs and black button eyes - have a strange psychic effect on people, unleashing the subconscious and exposing their innermost thoughts and fears.

Ben becomes fascinated by the Duendes, but the closer he gets, the more he begins to unravel, with terrifying results...

Beneath the World, A Sea is a tour de force of modern fiction - a deeply searching and unsettling novel about the human subconscious, and all that lies beneath.

'Beckett is superb at undercutting reader assumptions with a casual line of dialogue or acute psychological observation: the book reads like Conrad's Heart of Darkness reimagined by JG Ballard.' - Guardian

Reviews

A disturbing descent into a surreal world, written with a deft hand. * Adrian Tchaikovsky, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2016 *
Beckett is superb at undercutting reader assumptions with a casual line of dialogue or acute psychological observation: the book reads like Conrad's Heart of Darkness reimagined by JG Ballard. * Guardian *
Utterly compelling... it lingers in the memory. 5*s * SFX *
The Eden trilogy is a remarkable achievement: with wit, insight and invention Beckett has imagined a scientific Genesis not just about a society, but about the culture and myths that sustain it. It is both politically astute and theologically compelling. * Stuart Kelly, Guardian, on the Eden Trilogy *
Chris Beckett is a genius * Eric Brown on Spring Tide *
Eden is building into one of most vivid and fascinating places in modern SF. * Eddie Robson, SFX (review for The Eden Trilogy) *
An uneasy read that manages to feel both timely and urgent... Beckett offers an intelligent, visceral reminder that unless we change what today looks like, tomorrow will be turbulent indeed. * Guardian on America City *
Compelling... a grim demonstration of how one person can change history, but not control it. * SFX on America City *
A captivating and haunting book * Daily Mail on Dark Eden *

Author Bio

Chris Beckett is a former university lecturer and social worker living in Cambridge. He is the winner of the Edge Hill Short Fiction Award, 2009, for The Turing Test, the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2013, for Dark Eden and was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Novel of the Year Award for Mother of Eden in 2015 and for Daughter of Eden in 2016.
www.chris-beckett.com