At once a travel book, an autobiographical novel and free-floating meditation on Europe and the Antipodes, News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore begins with its narrator suspended in the salty, tideless waters of the Mediterranean. Adrift on an ocean of art history, literature and music, of memories and a dream-like present, O'Brien introduces a cast of underwater characters that includes Jacques Cousteau, the French secret service agent Dominique Prieur, Henri Matisse and the naked river-swimming nineteenth-century nun Mother Aubert, Modernism, the politics of French nuclear testing, swimming, drowning and underwater explosions are twined together with the life of a family in an innovative and engaging exploration. Gregory O'Brien is one of the leading New Zealand writers of his generation. He is primarily a poet, but is also very active as essayist, editor, curator and art writer. His collection of essays, After Bathing at Baxter's, was published to acclaim in 2002. His introduction to New Zealand art for children, Welcome to the South Seas, won the NZ Post Award in 2005