Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues : A Novel

A prize-winning, boundary-breaking debut exploring family, class, history, and the true idea of the self.

A glorious, tender, unsparing exploration of language, family, history, class, and the very idea of the self and the human, Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues begins with the loss of memory. As their grandmother falls into dementia, the narrator begins to ask questions—to fill in the silences and the gaps. Childhood memories resurface, revealing a path into the past. The matrilineal line leads toward nature, witchcraft, freedom, and power. Could this be where they belong?

A quest toward understanding, a story of liberation—from generational trauma, gender constructs, class identity, the limits of language—Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues invents its own forms, words, and bodies to conjure and cast out the very idea of the unspeakable. It searches for other kinds of knowledge and traditions, other ways of becoming, and reaches for wisdom beyond the human. In Sea, Mothers, Kim de l’Horizon recasts family narratives, abandoning the linear in favor of a fluid, incantatory, expansive search into who we are.