In Ballast to the White Sea is Malcolm Lowryâs most ambitious work of the mid-1930s. Inspired by his life experience, the novel recounts the story of a Cambridge undergraduate who aspires to be a writer but has come to believe that both his book and, in a sense, his life have already been âwritten.â After a fire broke out in Lowryâs squatterâs shack, all that remained of In Ballast to the White Sea were a few sheets of paper. Only decades after Lowryâs death did it become known that his first wife, Jan Gabrial, still had a typescript. This scholarly edition presents, for the first time, the once-lost novel. Patrick McCarthyâs critical introduction offers insight into Lowryâs sense of himself while Chris Ackerleyâs extensive annotations provide important information about Lowryâs life and art in an edition that will captivate readers and scholars alike.