Tara K. Menon’s appearance will be one of the major international highlights of this year’s Women Talking programme. Born in India, raised in Singapore, and shaped by years spent studying and working in New York, Menon currently teaches at Harvard University.

Her debut novel Under Water begins with the story of five-year-old Marissa, who, after the death of her mother, moves with her father to a Thai island in the Andaman Sea. There she meets Arielle, with whom she forms an intense, almost symbiotic bond. Their world is suddenly shattered by the 2004 tsunami, which separates them and irreversibly changes the course of their lives.

Menon follows the story far beyond childhood, tracing lives marked by memory, grief and an ongoing sense of uncertainty about the world. Climate catastrophe is not treated merely as a backdrop here, but as a force shaping relationships, emotions and the experience of loss itself.

This is literature that combines intimacy with scale – a story about closeness between girls, but also about a world in crisis. The themes explored in the novel strongly resonate with this year’s performative programme at Malta Festival, particularly Tiago Rodrigues’ The Distance and CocoRosie’s opera La Mort de la Mer.