Océan mer

A long time ago, in the middle of an ocean, a French naval frigate was wrecked. A hundred and forty-seven men tried to escape by climbing onto a raft. A horror that dragged on for days and days, during which the utmost ferocity and the gentlest pity were both to be seen.

A long time ago, on the shore of the ocean, a man arrived. What had brought him there was a promise. The guest house where he stopped was called Almayer's. Seven rooms. Strange children, a painter, a very beautiful woman, a professor with a curious name, a mysterious man, a young girl who did not want to die, an amusing priest. All of them there, searching for something, balanced on the ocean.

A long time ago, these fates and others met the sea and came back from it marked. This book tells their stories, because in listening to them, one hears the Voice of the sea. It can be read as a suspenseful tale, a prose poem, a philosophical story or an adventure novel. What dominates, in any case, is the sheer joy of storytelling, through a style and a novelistic technique with neither models nor precedents.