Cover Reveal: The Swimmers by Marian Womack
We have an exclusive first look at the cover for Marian Womack's upcoming literary climate change dystopia novel, The Swimmers.
With the world media’s focus on the current COVID-19 pandemic, the mainstream global discussion of the ongoing and future devastating effects of climate change has been put on the back burner. (If it was ever on the front burner to begin with.) But some of the best and most important speculative fiction releases are engaging with the vital issue in creative and fascinating ways. Marian Womack’s The Swimmers, a literary dystopia set in Andalusia, Spain, is one such upcoming novel, on our radar for this very reason (among others). The book centers themes of climate change, social inequality, and displacement in its tale set “after the ravages of global warming,” and we’re excited to offer a first look at the novel’s gorgeous cover…
Speaking about the cover, Womack said: “I am thankful to Titan’s design team for creating a cover that so directly addresses some of the themes of The Swimmers: Nature overcome by mankind, the breakdown of fragile relations between the present and the future, as well as conveying the dreamy and dangerous atmosphere that I have tried to evoke in this novel.”
Here’s the book’s full synopsis:
After the ravages of global warming, this is place of deep jungles, strange animals, and new taxonomies. Social inequality has ravaged society, now divided into surface dwellers and people who live in the Upper Settlement, a ring perched at the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. Within the surface dwellers, further divisions occur: the techies are old families, connected to the engineer tradition, builders of the Barrier, a huge wall that keeps the plastic-polluted Ocean away. They possess a much higher status than the beanies, their servants.
The novel opens after the Delivery Act has decreed all surface humans are ‘equal’. Narrated by Pearl, a young techie with a thread of shuvani blood, she navigates the complex social hierarchies and monstrous, ever-changing landscape. But a radical attack close to home forces her to question what she knew about herself and the world around her.
The Swimmers will hit bookshelves on February 16, 2021. It is now available for pre-order.
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Kayti is a pop culture writer, editor, and full-time nerd who comes from a working class background. A member of the Television Critics Association, she specializes…