Climate Fiction Confronts a Present Disaster

During a summer book tour the author experienced record-breaking temperatures in Italy, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Poland. In Zurich daily averages reached 37 °C, prompting a plunge into the Limmat River. Poland recorded its highest temperature on record, joining thirteen other nations with historic highs. Since the onset of these heatwaves, more than 10,000 excess deaths have been reported across the region, yet many treated the extreme heat as a mere inconvenience.

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The author recalls Hurricane Sandy in 2012, noting the contrast between the Upper West Side’s quick recovery and neighborhoods that endured submerged streets, collapsed infrastructure and prolonged power outages affecting half a million residents. International reporting placed the storm’s toll at 233 deaths across eight countries and $70 billion in damage. Volunteer work in Chinatown after the storm revealed severe shortages of basic supplies and a visible National Guard presence.

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Amitav Ghosh’s *The Great Derangement* argues that contemporary Western novels are ill-suited to portray the climate crisis. He cites an over-focus on individual psyche, limited narrative span, a human-centric imagination, and the incompatibility of “probability” with novel structure. Ghosh contends the crisis demands a new literary approach.

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Motivated by Ghosh’s critique, the author spent eight years writing *Under Water*, a realist novel centered on Marissa, who moves from a sparsely populated Southeast Asian island to a major U.S. metropolis. By embedding Hurricane Sandy and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami within Marissa’s history, the novel seeks to render an “improbable” event understandable through lived experience. The author positions the work as a “riposte” to the claim that realist fiction cannot confront climate change.

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• Over 10,000 excess deaths linked to recent European heatwaves.

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• Hurricane Sandy caused 233 deaths in eight countries and $70 billion in damage.

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The juxtaposition of extreme heat and a major storm shows climate-related disasters are already occurring, not merely projected futures. Translating these events into literary form aims to bridge abstract scientific warnings and personal narratives, potentially expanding public engagement with climate realities.

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The author argues that a realist novel focused on a single individual can still traverse multiple locales and time periods, thereby addressing the limitations Ghosh identifies.

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First-hand experiences—seeking shade in air-conditioned hotels, jumping into a river in Zurich, and witnessing post-Sandy New York—illustrate how climate extremes manifest differently across societies and neighborhoods, reinforcing the claim that the climate crisis is both a “freak event” and a “mundane truth.”

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While highlighting the disparity between media focus on New York and broader international impacts of Sandy, the sources lack systematic data on responses in other affected regions, leaving a gap in understanding the full global response.

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