There’s a lot we need to learn about love and identity. Nikki Dekker turns to animals under water for enticing revelations about these essential aspects of human life. In her debut novel diepdiepblauw (2022) she depicts the irrepressible longing for unknown places by intimately examining our relationship with the sea and its creatures. Together with Nikki, we realise that people around us are often just as enigmatic as the animals swimming beneath water. As a writer and radio producer, Nikki allows us to read and listen to her ponder on these ambiguities of human beings, and of our connections to one another.