The Aquatics

A powerful novel about friendship and betrayal in a society where dissent is dangerous and silence is enforced. How many lies can you tell yourself before looking away becomes complicity? In the fictional African state of Zambuena, Katmé enjoys a life of privilege as the wife of an ambitious politician. Her closest friend Samy is an artist who refuses to play by the same rules, using his work to expose the inequality and corruption beneath the regime. When Samy’s provocative new exhibition makes him a target of the authorities, Katmé is caught between the friend she loves and the political establishment that protects her comfortable life. As the pressure mounts, the compromises she has learned to live with become increasingly impossible to ignore. Moving from sharp satire into something altogether darker, The Aquatics is a fierce, unsettling novel about friendship, self-deception and the price of looking away.