At Sea is Sudanese-born author and screenwriter YM Abdel-Magied’s first literary novel. It draws on her past career as a mechanical engineer who worked in oil extraction. And she uses this experience to great effect. At Sea puts readers onto an oil rig where things seem to be a little out of control.
The main character of At Sea is Zainab, an engineer who essentially ran away to sea (for reasons explained later in the book) to become an oil rig drilling expert. All Zainab wants when At Sea opens is to spend some time with her pregnant sister but her old boss offers her a promotion to go out and help supervise the closing down of an off-shore rig. He sends her because he is sure that something is not right out there and hopes she can fix whatever the problem is.
Zainab quickly discovers, not unusually, that she is the only woman on board. This is a situation that she has faced before but one that takes a lot of management and care. Particularly as her promotion means that she has a crew to manage and has to share the job with a man whose nickname is Porno. Zainab has few allies and finds herself constantly pushing against the culture of the rig which is being driven by the “boss man” a South African nepo-baby who wants to prove himself by cutting corners and ensuring the highest level of profit.
At Sea is a tense read from the outset and the pressure only increases as the clock ticks down. Abdel-Magied provides enough detail for readers to understand some quite technical processes and the risks involved in them without clogging up the narrative with exposition. So that even as a casual reader, knowing nothing about this industry going in, there is a sense of danger and red flags being ignored. But this tension is almost background to the constant state of alert that Zainab has to be in around an all male crew, many of whom do not accept her expertise or experience because she is a woman. Zainab often finds herself out of her depth as the techniques that she has developed to survive and succeed in these environments stop working for her.
At Sea is a dark, compelling tale that shines a light on an extreme, male-dominated and profit-oriented industry. And it inexorably builds to a high level of tension. With its relatively short length it is likely that many readers will pick it up and find themselves unable to put it down.
At Sea by YM Abdel-Magied
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