FREE Returns

FREE Delivery on book orders dispatched by Amazon over £10.00 .

Temporarily out of stock.
Order now and we'll deliver when available. We'll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information.

Want it faster? The Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app.

££16.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Payment

Secure transaction

Dispatches from

Amazon

Sold by

Amazon

Returns

Returnable within 30 days of receipt

Details

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Dispatches from

Amazon

Sold by

Amazon

Returns

Returnable within 30 days of receipt

Item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt

Read full return policy

Add gift options

FREE delivery 17 - 19 August. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by betterworldbooksltd

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

See all 2 images

Follow the author

J. M. Ledgard

Submergence Hardcover – 21 July 2011

by J M Ledgard (Author)

3.8 337 ratings

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"£16.99","priceAmount":16.99,"currencySymbol":"£","integerValue":"16","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"sYHlqMoe08fGQC0vGzfbPTeEQ8Qov5NZKlgMYrxtDsRunecKBLgyIGR2RA2GTzz0zrqaGSlpBDqTsEfiCGL5yHB%2F%2FPllMtdOunUsTX4niIGNYSqkpazw5cJU1mUGG051","locale":"en-GB","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"£5.06","priceAmount":5.06,"currencySymbol":"£","integerValue":"5","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"06","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"sYHlqMoe08fGQC0vGzfbPTeEQ8Qov5NZNwwT%2B08p7OJ1KRtV1Pb44Rm4v2LtvhhM%2BECkbWrbeLt05THQieN7pYNU4dweKue2CIvUHEuFoPsSV%2BGCMVW%2FS62nx9c2E2fwaypnfsoZ%2BoYK4yMI7K6lLrcZAeCsF0IX%2F63ljJI8LgiYOggyD2ybsQ%3D%3D","locale":"en-GB","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

In a room with no windows on the eastern coast of Africa, an Englishman, James More, is held captive by jihadist fighters. Posing as a water engineer to spy on al-Qaeda activity in the area, he now faces extreme privation, mock executions and forced marches through arid Somali badlands. Thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, Danielle Flinders, a biomathematician, prepares for a dive to the ocean floor to determine the extent and forms of life in the deep.

Both are drawn back, in their thoughts, to the Christmas of the previous year, and to a French hotel on the Atlantic coast, where a chance encounter on the beach led to an intense and enduring romance, now stretching across continents. For James, a descendant of Thomas More, his mind escapes to utopias, and fragments of his life and learning before his incarceration, now haunting him. Danny is drawn back to mythical and scientific origins and to the ocean: immense and otherworldly, a comfort and a threat.

Submergence is a love story, a meditation on mortality, and a vivid portrayal of man's place on Earth. With it J. M. Ledgard proves himself a writer of large horizons and vast ambition.

Print length

208 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Jonathan Cape
Publication date

21 July 2011
Dimensions

16.13 x 1.93 x 24.05 cm
ISBN-10

0224091379
ISBN-13

978-0224091374
See all details

Kim Stanley Robinson
6,741
Paperback
41 offers from £0.72
J M Ledgard
29
Paperback
12 offers from £0.26
Kate Greene
34
Hardcover
17 offers from £6.13

Product description

Review

"A world-spanning spy story, a hyper-literary novel, Submergence succeeds, and is immensely pleasurable, because Ledgard's magnetic north is... such an uncanny, inhuman and deathly place. It is a point far below the familiar sea, at the very bottom of the ocean; it is the hadopelagic, the Hadal deep, from the Greek Hades, meaning unseen. This is where we consciousness-addicted human beings are heading as millennial gravity pulls us down. It will be a submergence. You will take your place in the boiling-hot fissures, among the teeming hordes of nameless micro-organisms that mimic no forms, because they are the foundation of all forms. Including, in some unfathomable way, the form of this wonderful novel."--Toby Litt, New Statesman

"From the icy depths of the Greenland Sea to the sweltering plains of a Somali Islamist training camp, Ledgard's masterful second novel is a beautifully crafted, rigorously researched, and deeply affecting love story."--Steve Bloomfield, Monocle

About the Author

J. M. Ledgard was born in 1968. He is a foreign correspondent for The Economist
in Africa.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jonathan Cape (21 July 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0224091379
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0224091374
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.13 x 1.93 x 24.05 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 2,188,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 152,870 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)
- 157,729 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 163,214 in Contemporary Romance (Books)

Customer reviews:
3.8 337 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

J. M. Ledgard

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

J.M. Ledgard was born in the Shetland Islands. He is a political and war correspondent for the Economist and a thinker on risk and technology in emerging economies. He lives and works in Africa.

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5

337 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Christopher Newens

A prose poem to a multifarious world.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 June 2013

Verified Purchase

This beautifully written book exposes the different worlds embedded beneath the surface of the one we are living in: worlds of science, art, luxury, horror, war etc.

It feels impressively up to date in the parts on the war on terror, and paints what we can only assume is a very accurate picture of the desperate situation on the Horn of Africa at present.

The other two main story strands -- one set in a French hotel, the other on the Greenland Sea -- while nice to read are almost too much of a pleasure: the hotel sequence relentlessly invites us into vicarious luxury, while there's a bit of an "Ain't it cool" strand to the deep sea facts spouted during the books time on the Greenland Sea.

Likewise, the book's two main characters are a little bit "too cool for school", almost straying into romantic fiction territory: a British ,strong silent former-soldier-current-spy, and a Eurotrash-y voluptuous, hyper-intelligent, oceanographer.

All in all though, the book's strengths outweigh its weaknesses. The prose style alone makes it worth the read.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

KIKAREN

Contrived fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 December 2015

Verified Purchase

SUBMERGENCE [By J M Ledgard]. This guy lives in South Africa but was born in Scotland. Not American, anyway. It has good reviews on Amazon generally . . . can’t remember now who recommended it . . . it’s okay. I am not being hyper-critical today; it’s okay. Wilfully obscure which is always a turn-off for me it is written as two parallel stories of two people who meet briefly at a hotel in France and try to conduct a relationship across many impossible miles of land, sea and situation. She is a marine biologist working out of Woods Hole in the USA, he is a British spy who has been captured by jihadists in Somalia.
Sound fascinating? Interesting then? What about challenging?
I didn’t really care about him, or her. She is a complete contrivance of someone’s erotic fantasy[dusky, sexy, brainy, impossibly self-sufficient]. He is semi-realistic and in fact his character is based upon a French spy who really was captured by Somali resistance fighters around the middle of 2012 and dragged around the desert from hell-hole to hell-hole.
Just not sure what the point is. I did finish it and there are a lot of words about the state of civilisation in the early 21stC which are sort-of interesting but I can get all that in a more palatable form from In Our Time on Thursday morning, so I wasn’t riveted. I read today that they are turning it into a film with James McAvoy, the X-Men actor. Good luck with that.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Philtrum

Too clever by half - or maybe just rubbish

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 January 2012

Verified Purchase

I bought this on the basis of a glowing review in Word magazine and the numerous 5* reviews here. I was thus very much looking forward to it.

What a waste of time!

I'm not an ignorant man. I could follow the story, and the science. There seemed to be no real insight into the two main characters. We were told what they were thinking but not why.

Too clever by half. The author was far too keen on just throwing bits of information at us, as though something much larger was being constructed but, no, just bits of information.

He can string a sentence together - but you would hope he could with his background.

It is possible I missed the point of the book, though the other reviews here don't actually mention a point, just an overal feeling engendered by the book. Perhaps there is no point, just the feeling, but, if so, the feeling is not one of being rewarded for time spent reading it.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bobleckridge

beautifully written

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 July 2013

Verified Purchase

A thought provoking exploration of what it is to be human told through the stories of the desert and the ocean deep with threads of the literature of Hell and the Abyss woven throughout

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Tony B

complex and beautiful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 December 2011

Having read Legards extraordinary first novel, Giraffe, I was greatly looking forward to his second. Far from disappointing, Submergence is written with an intelligence and emotional warmth which surpasses the earlier book. Part love story, part hostage drama, this book takes the reader to places both uncomfortable and moving. I read it on one sitting, and found myself wanting to start it again from the beginning.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	AbeBooks Books, art & collectables	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Audible Download Audiobooks	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	DPReview Digital Photography	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations

Amazon Home Services Experienced pros Happiness Guarantee	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital & Print Publishing Made Easy	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands

Amazon Warehouse Deep Discounts Open-Box Products	Amazon Business Service for business customers	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food

Buy new: £16.99£16.99 FREE delivery in the UK Payment Secure transaction Dispatches from Amazon Sold by Amazon Returns Returnable within 30 days of receipt

Buy used £5.06

Follow the author

Submergence Hardcover – 21 July 2011

Purchase options and add-ons

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product description

Review

About the Author

Product details

About the author

J. M. Ledgard

Customer reviews

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Buy new:

£16.99

FREE delivery in the UK

Payment

Secure transaction

Dispatches from

Amazon

Sold by

Amazon

Returns

Returnable within 30 days of receipt

Buy used

£5.06