Underjungle

Deep below the surface, our world is cold, dark and content. Colors are fickle. Red disappears first as you descend, followed by the yellow of the sun. The hundred shades of blue last the longest, but eventually there is only black—and the candied ooze of the ocean floor... 

In Underjungle, an intelligent life form known as the yc exist in the ocean’s depths, an apex predator among most fish. Long ago, this species fractured from a single group into seven distinct tribes, each with their own dialect and cultural idiosyncrasies. Now, one tribe, the Gjala, has stumbled across a most intriguing and unusual object: a sunken corpse. As news travels across the ocean, and the other tribes converge to investigate, the consequences and questions raised will reverberate for generations to come.

Underjungle asks readers to give themselves up to another world: to step outside not just of themselves, but of their species. A broad metaphysical story of fantastical world-building from accomplished journalist and nature writer James Sturz, Underjungle is a lyrical tale of love and war, encompassing the marine environment, science, art, philosophy and grief—as deep and surprising as life on the seafloor, where much of this story is set.

Buoyed by humor and tinged with the unshakeable melancholy of loss is the existential question that forever ties the novel to our human experience: what is our purpose?



Genre: Science Fiction

"Not many of us would have the audacity to write a novel where the only human character is a corpse decomposing on the ocean floor, but in Underjungle James Sturz has met this challenge in dazzling fashion. To get a more intimate view of the world under the waves you'd probably have to become fish food yourself, so instead I recommend this profound and unclassifiable novel, a mind-expanding Aeneid of the seas." - Ned Beauman

"So, so gorgeously strange, told by a sea creature, and set completely underwater, Underjungle is about all the big issues--love, loss, family, war--but it's also about how all the oceans, like all of us, are connected and the dangers when we forget that. It's written in prose as startlingly beautiful as the discovery of a real pearl shimmering in an oyster. A love letter to our oceans, Underjungle glints with humor and heart." - Caroline Leavitt

"Gorgeously weird and weirdly gorgeous. Underjungle is a mesmerizing dissection of the best and worst of us, set in an undersea world untouched by humanity, so vividly and masterfully drawn that it feels both foreign and familiar. I have never read anything quite like it. Cleverly poetic, sometimes uncomfortable, and occasionally hilarious, but ultimately an ode to the wonders of depths unexplored." - Shelby Van Pelt