The Sea and Summer

George Turner 1987

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
dystopian survival loss political

Our Take

Melbourne under climate catastrophe, stratified by wealth and water access, narrated across generations. Turner writes environmental collapse as social collapse, the sea rising to swallow the poor first. An overlooked masterpiece of climate fiction, prescient in ways that are now embarrassing to acknowledge. Turner's bitterness about who drowns first remains entirely accurate.

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