Ocean Sea

One of Alessandro Baricco’s loudest triumphs—one of the most striking authors of contemporary literature—his novel “Sea Ocean,” included in this edition and awarded the Viareggio and “Palazzo al Bosco” prizes.

In the coastal tavern “Almaier,” a strange professor assembles his “Encyclopedia of Limits” (where does the sea end?); an artist, once in demand as a salon portrait painter, tries to “write the sea with the sea,” dipping his brush directly into the seawater; and one timid stranger comes here to heal from love, while another—trying to be cured by love… They exist as if there is still endless time ahead, and around them there is a diffuse hush, detachment, and an infinite weariness of the soul.

The more powerful the blow when, from this shifting, almost fairy-tale mist, an unmistakable and merciless real history begins to take shape: several feral people on a raft in the middle of the ocean—and the body of a beloved woman, slipping through the waves…

So great love overcomes the fear of life and the fear of death—but in the end it yields to the thirst for great revenge, because treachery is not subject to forgiveness.