A number of disparate lives converge at a remote seaside inn: a lovelorn professor, a renowned painter, an inscrutable seductress – and a beautiful young girl, fatally ill, brought to the sea by a desperate father’s last hope. An intricate web of destinies and associations begins to reveal itself, but it is not until the arrival of a mysterious sailor called Adams that the truth in all its dreamlike beautiful and cruelty becomes clear. Alternately playful and profoundly serious, Baricco’s novel surges the hypnotic power of the ocean sea.

“The sea suddenly seemed to have been waiting for them forever.”

Alessandro Baricco “Ocean Sea”. First published in 1993. This paperback edition was published by Canongate as part of the Canons series in 2019. English translation by Alastair McEwen. I bought it myself for the Sea Library 💙

Photos by Anna Iltnere / Sea Library