Jellyfishes

Jellyfishes

A Portrait

143 pages

Hardcover with numerous illustrations

Genre: Nature Writing, Nature, Essay, Nonfiction, Picture Book
Jellyfish, the amazing "lungs of the seas" the most enigmatic yet beguiling creatures of the animal kingdom, in a luminous, richly illustrated portrait

From the direct tides to the nearshore continental shelf zone, from the surface of the open sea down to its deepest, hardly explored areas, they make not only the water glow with their tremendously irritable, "like brain matter turned into skins" bodies: Jellyfish. Since time immemorial, medusae have eluded any kind of definition. They twist and turn like organized water in the waves flowing around them and make the imagination spark. But whether as a disruptive factor or symbol of the digital and immersive, as a creative idea of Art Deco, as a spineless horror, alien of the sea, queer heraldic animal, or alarmist emblem of a radical change in which even scientists sometimes reach their limits - jellyfish, as Samuel Hamen shows in this dazzling portrait, do not twitch with eyelashes but with tentacles that, depending on the species, can cause severe burns even on fleeting contact. Whoever nevertheless dares to follow their hovering movements is revealed an insight into the earliest history of the earth as well as into all conceivable futures.

German title: Quallen - Ein Portrait
ISBN: 978-3-7518-0214-7
Publisher: Matthes & Seitz Berlin
Publication date: 2022
Series: Naturkunden
Illustration: Falk Nordmann

Licence

Essay

Sample translation

English sample translation available

Samuel Hamen, born in Luxembourg City in 1988, is a writer, literary critic for Deutschlandfunk and ZEIT Online, among others, and president of the Luxembourg writers' association A:LL.  Most recently, he was awarded the Luxembourg Book Prize 2020 and an annual fellowship from the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.