In Ascension: Longlisted for The Booker Prize 2023

In Ascension centres on Leigh, who grows up in Rotterdam and finds solace by the waterfront, away from an unhappy home and a volatile father. Her early fascination with the undersea world shapes her future, and she goes on to excel in marine biology, travelling widely to study ancient organisms.

After a trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team hoping to uncover evidence of the earth’s earliest life forms. What she finds instead challenges established ideas about human beginnings. The discovery draws her to the Mojave Desert and into the orbit of an ambitious new space agency, where she learns the Atlantic trench is one of several connected phenomena around the world, forming a pattern beyond human understanding.

Key details

• Longlisted for The Booker Prize 2023
• Follows Leigh, a marine biologist who joins an Atlantic Ocean exploration team
• Set across Rotterdam, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mojave Desert

Synopsis

Leigh’s childhood in Rotterdam sparks a lasting fascination with the sea, which later becomes a career studying ancient marine organisms around the world. When she signs on to investigate a newly discovered trench in the Atlantic, her research leads to a finding that unsettles accepted thinking about humanity’s origins.

Her work then brings her into contact with a space agency examining related phenomena across the globe. As the connections become clearer, Leigh must weigh her responsibilities to her declining mother and younger sister against the pull of a journey that reaches far beyond Earth.

Rackhams Reference : YBSQ5WPXIX