Winner of 2020 Costa Novel Award & Costa Book of the Year 2020 ‘Monique Roffey is a unique talent and most daring and versatile of writers’ – Bernardine Evaristo March 1976: St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch, at the start of the rainy season. A fisherman sings to himself in his pirogue, waiting for a catch but attracts a sea-dweller he doesn’t expect. Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, has been swimming the Caribbean Sea for centuries. And she is entranced by this man David and his song.