Last fall, the director and writer Kerri King emailed me, saying she was at work on a novel and asking if she could use me in it. Or, more specifically, could she create a fictional character named J. Sturz for her story. This particular J. Sturz is also an author, but he focuses on mermen and is capable of diagramming their anatomy, which would be way over my head. I was intrigued, and I said yes. And her book, THE ISLAND, is for sale now.

I visited Italy last fall on a book tour when UNDERJUNGLE came out there, and I had lunch in Bologna at Trattoria Seghei with the journalist Valentina Pigmei. There was tortellini in brodo, guinea fowl, and lambrusco, but mostly we talked about the sea, our connections to it, and how we (all of us) always need to feel more.

I’m delighted to share that UNDERJUNGLE is a finalist for the 2025 Premio Letterario Internazionale del Mare Piero Ottone, one of 21 Italian and 8 foreign novels published in Italy between March 2023 and December 2024 on the theme of “sea, islands, and navigation.”

Ilaria Oddenino, for her translation of UNDERJUNGLE by James Sturz from English, is the first finalist of the 8th edition of the Annibal Caro Prize.

I was amazed and relieved, and above all grateful, to have appeared live on Italy’s national radio station Rai 3 in Rome, discussing UNDERJUNGLE in Italian on the show “Fahrenheit” with host Tommaso Giartosio. When I was 22, I lived in Bologna for a year, and I wanted nothing more than to be an author.

All roads lead to Rome, or at least UNDERJUNGLE’s do. The Italian version of the novel was published September 18, 2024 by Edizioni di Atlantide, and I’m thrilled to have been invited to present it in eight cities in November and December, from Rome to Milan.

Where Sturz breaks from his possible predecessors, and follows an ever-inevitably new path, is in his introspection into the mind and senses of a subject that's other-than-us: in his attempt to create a coherent symbolic system, to savor a language, and to imagine perceptions and emotions that are infinitely distant from ours. In this intent, his aquatic, philosophical, and intensely lyrical novel reveals itself as child of its time, which is also ours.

PERCORSI DI LETTURA Viaggio attraverso «Underjungle» di James Sturz, edito da Atlantide, e «Tropico Mediterraneo» di Stefano Liberti per Laterza

READING GUIDE Journey through «Underjungle» by James Sturz, published by Atlantide, and «Tropico Mediterraneo» by Stefano Liberti for Laterza

“Un romanzo poetico e metafisico sull’oceano e le creature che lo abitano. Un libro bellissimo e davvero incredibile che racconta la vita attraverso la storia di una civiltà marina.”

Prefer to read Underjungle in Italian? Here’s your chance, thanks to Edizioni di Atlantide and Ilaria Oddenino, who translated the novel with tenderness, precision, and grace.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the water. The currents; the flitting, undulating, and tail-slapping life; the sunken ships; the sounds that can travel for 100 miles and yet seem like they originate beside you; the ocean’s persistence in the face of degradation and disappearing corals; the way it brings the creatures who live in it what they need — food, minerals, oxygen — and its mystery, power, and peace.

A reporter visits the first subsea condominiums off the Great Barrier Reef in 2083. But what happens when the environment turns less pacific?

Foreword Reviews is excited to announce the Finalists for the 2023 INDIES Book of the Year Awards. As a platform dedicated to discovering, reviewing, and sharing works from university and independent publishers, we are honored to showcase the outstanding talent and skill represented in this year’s Finalists.

Discover the transformative power of settings in storytelling with James Sturz, a celebrated novelist and magazine writer whose work has been published by The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, among others.

Greg Holt (aka Greg the Divemaster) interviews me on ScubaRadio.

And finally, a work of fiction that provides a fantastical, yet relatable, portrait of an environment that's a component of the majority of vacations: oceans. The narrator of "Underjungle," by James Sturz (Unnamed Press, 2023), is a thoughtful, sensitive and observant fish. The mix of fantasy, science and emotion was my favorite novel of the year and certainly one of the most unusual books in 2023.

Mitch Hampton of the Journey of an Aesthete Podcast interviews me…

BOMB looks back at the books from small and independent presses we featured in 2023 and helps you pair them with the idiosyncratic readers in your life.

James Sturz’s novel Underjungle is inventive and profound, a masterpiece of unique storytelling.

“Underjungle,” a new novel by author and journalist James Sturz about love, loss, family and war set entirely underwater, was recently released.

The novel is about an intelligent life form known as the “yc” that exist in the ocean’s depths, an apex predator among most fish.

The first fall monthly presentation by the New Jersey Maritime Museum will be given on Friday, Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. at Buckalew’s Restaurant and Tavern in Beach Haven.

The guest speaker is James Sturz, journalist and author of Underjungle, a tale of love, loss, family and war, set entirely underwater.