From legendary writer Paul Theroux comes an atmospheric novel following a big-wave surfer as he confronts aging, privilege, mortality, and whose lives we choose to remember.

'It was as if in surfing he was carving his name in water, invisibly, joyously.'

Now in his sixties, big-wave surfer Joe Sharkey has passed his prime. The younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still call him the Shark, but his sponsors are looking elsewhere.

When Joe accidentally hits and kills a man near Waimea while driving home from a bar after a night of drinking, it seems he'll never rebound. Under the direction of his devoted girlfriend Olive, he throws himself into uncovering his victim's story. But what they find in Max Mulgrave is anything but expected: a shared history - and refuge in the waves.

With vivid, richly imagined detail, Theroux's latest novel explores the underside of an island paradise we rarely see.