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Sign up todayThe Drowned Places
Brought to you by Penguin.
Immersed in history and myth, Damian Le Bas explores the meaning we find in sunken ruins around the world
Thousands of years ago, an island off the Straits of Gibraltar went to war with ancient Athens. The battle was lost, and an earthquake cleaved the land in two. Overnight the island sank beneath the waves – or so legend tells.
As a young boy, Damian Le Bas was captivated by the lost city of Atlantis. Even as an adult, he dreams about diving amid its ancient ruins, observing with his own eyes the remnants of an era that still reverberates in our own.
After the death of his father, torn between his lifelong desire and the taboo his Romany culture places on the ocean, he comes by chance across a dive shop. He can’t help but go in.
Under the waves he enters a breathtaking world. As he masters the skills of this dangerous sport, diving with seals in the Farne Islands, exploring submerged Roman ruins in Naples and mapping the sunken city of Port Royal in Jamaica, he is entranced anew, by wonders both manmade and natural.
Atlantis – from its first account by Plato, to the explorers who searched in vain and the discovery that might finally solve its mystery – takes on a new shape in Damian’s quest. At once a spellbinding love letter to diving, The Drowned Places is also a profound examination of the power that myth has over us, and what happens when it crosses over into reality.
© Damian Le Bas 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Damian Le Bas is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist. His first book The Stopping Places won the Somerset Maugham Award, a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award, and was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. Damian is widely published as a journalist and poet and has taught for the Arvon foundation. A recipient of a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, he is a member of the European Film Academy, holds a First Class degree in Theology from the University of Oxford, and was awarded an honorary Master of Education by the University of Chichester. Besides getting in the sea he loves music, walking and spending time in the woods and hills with his family and friends. The Drowned Places is his second book.