Sunken Lands

From Stone Age lands that slipped beneath the English Channel to the rapid inundation of New Orleans, Gareth E. Rees journeys through drowned forests, shrinking wetlands, vanishing islands and sinking towns to explore stories of flooded places from the past – and those disappearing before our eyes.

Floods have been part of humanity’s story from its very beginnings. Across millennia, each time the waters rose, the climactic trauma left its mark on our ancestors, influencing religion, folklore and culture across the world. But while floods lead to violent change, death and extinction, they are also about renewal and rebirth as part of the ebb and flow of Earth’s natural cycles. The places lost to the eternally shifting boundaries between water and land continue to have a powerful emotional resonance today. Their uncertain features emerge to haunt us, briefly, when the moon draws back the tide to reveal a spire or a tree stump. But, imbued with myths and warnings from the past, these underwater worlds can also teach us important lessons about the unavoidability of change, the necessity of harmonising with nature’s flux and the folly of trying to control it.

Sunken Lands peels back the layers of silt, sea and mythology to reveal what our submerged past can tell us about our imminent future as rising sea levels transform our planet once more.

Author Biography

Gareth E. Rees is the author of Unofficial Britain, longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and one of the Sunday Times best books of the year 2020. He’s also the author of Car Park Life, The Stone Tide and Marshland. His first short story collection, Terminal Zones, was published in 2022 and examines the strangeness of everyday life in a time of climate change. He lives in Hastings with his wife and children.