In Private Rites, the sophomore novel from Polari Prize-winning novelist Julia Armfield, the end of the world is nigh. In this dystopian vision of the future, the apocalypse comes in the form of a deluge: Venice is gone, totally submerged underwater, while in the British city where sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes live, the rain never stops. Crustaceans clog gutters, houses routinely crumble into the water, and people travel everywhere via ferry. When the sisters’ father dies, he is cremated like everyone else is, because “there’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded”. With the world now “in its final stages”, climate catastrophe has become mundane; in spite of the horror unfolding around them, most characters in the book continue going to work, wondering what to eat for dinner, and squabbling with one another.

When we are introduced to them, Isla, Irene and Agnes aren’t in regular contact. It’s the death of their father – Stephen Carmichael, an acclaimed architect who made his name designing climate-proofed houses for the wealthy – which forces them to reconnect. It soon becomes clear that Carmichael, a cold, cruel man, has left an indelible mark on each of his three daughters, none of whom seem fully comfortable in each other’s company or capable of trusting one another. The King Lear parallels are clear: on one occasion Irene explicitly refers to herself and her sisters as “Lear’s dyke daughters”.

Meanwhile, as people grow more and more desperate to undo the climate crisis, arcane rites and rituals creep back into practice. Against this backdrop, the three women are setting about organising their father’s funeral when strange things start happening: Isla finds an etching of an uncanny face carved into the dining table in their father’s home; a woman on a ferry unashamedly stares at Agnes before committing suicide moments later. Before long, the three sisters find themselves at the centre of a terrifying plan hatched to save the world from annihilation.

Ahead of the publication of Private Rites, we spoke to Armfield about finding inspiration in Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy, why water is such a potent queer symbol, and the capitalist death drive.

The book is reminiscent of King Lear – on one occasion Irene explicitly refers to herself and her sisters as King Lear’s ‘dyke daughters’. What drew you to Lear? It’s often described as Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy.

Julia Armfield: It’s interesting – I wasn’t necessarily setting out to write an interpretation of something, but I’ve always been interested in the balance of siblings, and particularly three siblings – such specific ‘types’ emerge so quickly with it. I knew for a long time that I was going to write about these sisters, and then I started thinking about King Lear because it’s such a classic ‘three sisters’ text. So, the shape of the novel threw me in that direction.

I think Succession did a similar thing.

Julia Armfield: I’ve literally never seen an episode of it! But I’ve seen a lot of different versions of King Lear. I’ve seen a version which verged on a mafia vibe; I’ve seen a version which was more about medieval tribalism. It’s interesting the way that family always lends itself to these really extreme interpretations. I very, very seldom just see a ‘straight’ interpretation of Lear – they’re always doing something like that.

Everything that happens in Lear is in relation to or in reflection to Lear himself. Goneril, Cordelia, and Regan aren’t actually on stage very much. I wasn’t hoping to ‘reclaim the women’ in this story, because I’m not, but I was more interested in the fact that if they were on stage all the time, it would probably still always be in relation to him. They would still be thinking about him because that’s the way familial trauma operates: you are consistently ‘coming back’ from your relationship with someone. It’s constantly in the background somewhere. Even if you’re completely over it, it’s still there. I think that’s what I was interested in: what if King Lear focused on everything that was going on backstage all the time?

“I’m interested in the concept of being one thing on the surface and another thing underneath, which I think is often very, very central to the queer experience” – Julia Armfield

Water is a recurring symbol in both Private Rites and your debut novel Our Wives Under The Sea. Why do you think you are drawn to water as a motif?

Julia Armfield: I was drawn to water quite naturally, as a writing element or a writing tool. I realised that so many of the formative lesbian texts and movies and TV shows that I had been inhaling as a child and as a teenager are set by the water or involve water in some way. Many of Sarah Waters’ novels are set by the sea. Céline Sciamma’s Water Lilies is set in a pool, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is set by the sea. So in some ways, I think it’s that sort of symbiotic thing where you regurgitate the things that you’ve seen. But at the same time, it did make me think: why?

There’s something about the liminality of water, which I think speaks very well to the thing that I’m often trying to do. I’m interested in the concept of being one thing on the surface and another thing underneath, which is often very, very central to the queer experience.

The book is set in the future, in a city which is gradually sinking underwater due to climate change. But a lot of what you describe is already happening: Isla’s neighbour’s house terrifyingly collapses into the water, for example, and I read an article just the other day about this Scottish town, Inverbervie, which is already disappearing into the sea. How did you go about constructing the apocalyptic setting in the novel?

Julia Armfield: It is set in the future, but I didn’t want it to be a sort of recognisably science fiction-style future. I wanted it to be a nonspecific but nonetheless very near future, because I’m not so interested in enormous world building. I’m more interested in subsistence. I’m interested in the bureaucracy. I’m interested in mundanity.

I like to write genre, but I like to write very realism-inflected genre, because I’m not necessarily interested in all of the great technical ways in which people would or wouldn’t be trying to combat climate change. I’m interested in the fact that you would still be getting a phone call from your boss being like ‘come in if you can’. I’m interested in people’s mundane lives and the way that people are extremely liable to go about their daily lives, always – this is something that we have daily proof of. A lot of the time, that speaks in two directions: that speaks to a very bad thing, apathy, but it also speaks to a good thing, adaptability. I’m interested in the push and pull of those two things.

Do you think that’s human nature – that urge to just carry on as normal?

Julia Armfield: I think it’s capitalism. The capitalist death drive is very much what this novel is also about, in the fact that everything that benefits itself still comes out on top – despite probably having been the thing that got us into [the climate crisis] in the first place.

But there are moments in the novel where people do seem to wake up to the reality of what is happening – Morven, Isla’s ex-wife, quits her job, leaves, and travels north ‘to live while the world [is] still liveable’. A group of people quit their jobs en-masse, citing the pointlessness of working through the apocalypse. Protests seem to happen quite regularly. Was it important to you to show that there is another way of living, as opposed to just passively drifting through life?

Julia Armfield: Definitely. I think it was also very important to just have variety, to be completely honest. I’m not particularly in the business of hopeless narratives. I think that apathy is entirely a negative thing. In any political situation, acting like ‘well, nothing can be fixed, so there is no point in trying’ is functionally an extremely malign viewpoint. If you give up hope on one thing, you give up hope on everyone. So it was important to me to have a variety of viewpoints.

I also thought it was interesting how, despite the sisters’ near-incessant arguing, they instinctively try to save each other right at the novel’s end. Isla even thinks: ‘why did I think those stupid squabbles were important’. Do you think that’s also part of being human? That we don’t realise how we take our loved ones for granted until it’s too late?

Julia Armfield: I think you’re right. For me, a lot of the novel is about trying to reframe the people you have had thrust upon you as people that you would choose to have with you, but also people to whom you have some kind of responsibility. Especially with Isla’s character – she’s very, very aware of the responsibility that she has towards everybody. She has that very ‘oldest sister’ thing of being like, ‘if I didn’t do this, then nothing would ever get done’. But at the same time, choosing to recognise that in yourself and resenting it all the time is not actually kindness at all. You’re just doing these things as if it’s your job. It’s not a novel about recognising the importance of family, that’s not the point – but it is a novel about trying to find grace for other people.

Private Rites by Julia Armfield is published by 4th Estate on June 11. Buy your copy here.