Ocean Sea

7 hrs. 21 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Alessandro Baricco

Narrator Yury Vasilyev

Description

It’s impossible to define the genre of the book “Sea-Ocean” (1993). It is both a philosophical parable and a love story and a detective novel. Formally, it is a story about how totally different people meet in a long-abandoned tavern “Almajer,” each with their own past, their own secrets, dreams, and desires.

The tavern’s lodgers can hardly be considered ordinary people. The artist Plasson for many years has tried to paint the sea, but his canvases remain untouched and pristine. Anne Deveria ended up here for having betrayed her husband and is now trying to find a cure for infidelity. Professor Bartleboom works diligently on an “Encyclopedia of Limits” and writes every day to a nonexistent woman whom he will one day meet and who will love him forever. Padre Plush composes prayers and accompanies Elizevin to the sea, for whom the sea has been prescribed as a potent medicine against an unusual disease—fear of living. All of them came from different edges of life, and “it’s strange that they would never have met until they went from one end to the other through the universe.”

They are all concerned with finding the truth, but each has their own path—and here they are at the sea. On the shore, “which does not know time and forever lives the same day.” This book is about the sea that contains all life, and about the fact that truth cannot be expressed in words or paint. At the seaside there is a wonderful tavern where all wounds are healed and the true path is shown. And Alessandro Baricco promises that “one day, someone will feel such tiredness that they will find this place.”