Ultramarine

Synopsis

A seasoned cargo ship captain has built her career on discipline, routine, and absolute control. Responsible for a crew of twenty men crossing the Atlantic, she knows that every decision at sea carries weight. But after granting her crew an uncharacteristic moment of freedom to stop the engines and swim in the open ocean, something impossible happens. When everyone climbs back aboard, there are twenty-one men instead of twenty.

From that moment on, certainty begins to unravel. Instruments fail, the horizon shifts, and the boundaries between reality, memory, and imagination dissolve into the endless expanse of the sea. Mariette Navarro transforms a simple premise into a hypnotic, psychologically rich novel that explores authority, isolation, identity, and the unknowable forces that shape our inner lives. Spare, haunting, and quietly unsettling, Ultramarine is an unforgettable work of contemporary French literature.

About the Author

Mariette Navarro is a French novelist, playwright, dramaturg, and educator. Her fiction and theatre have earned numerous literary awards in France, and she is celebrated for blending philosophical inquiry with lyrical, psychologically charged storytelling. Ultramarine, her first novel, won the 2024 Albertine Translation Prize. This edition is translated from the French by Eve Hill-Agnus, a Franco-American writer, editor, and translator.

Publisher

Deep Vellum

Publication Date

March 4, 2025

Format

Paperback

Pages

164

Subjects

Literary Fiction · Fiction in Translation · French Literature · Psychological Fiction · Sea Fiction · Speculative Fiction

ISBN

9781646053575