Sailors Can't Swim

Sailors Can’t Swim is a squall of a novel: part bildungsroman, part maritime fairy tale, part history of an alternate eighteenth century. With gale-force vitality, it lays bare the meanness of meritocracy and the arbitrariness of citizenship in a world where every possession, or privilege, belonged to someone else first.

On the island of Ys, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, safety lies behind the city’s high walls – where citizens live in opulent security while the shore dwellers bel...