Πιο Πέρα από τη Θάλασσα
Paul Lynch, 2024
A fisherman in a Venezuelan lagoon is offered money to take two men out to sea, just ahead of a storm. Lynch's prose moves with the swell of the lagoon: slow, lyrical, and thick with heat, longing and approaching weather.
Feels like awe, longing and tenderness. About nature, love and time.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy lyrical fiction that lets landscape and weather shape the story more than quick turns of plot. Its pace is deliberate and the atmosphere heavy, so it may not suit you if you want a brisk, plot-driven sea story.
Why read it
It offers a close look at a man caught between need and risk, and at a sea that holds both beauty and threat.
A page from the book
He offers marriage the only way he knows: with a list of household things.
Μιὰ μέρα, ρόζα, πρέπει νὰ μὲ παντρευτεῖς. ῞Ενας ψαρὰς εἶμαι, τὸ ξέρω. ᾽αλλὰ θὰ ξεπληρώσω τὶς δόσεις ποὺ χρωστᾶς γιὰ τὴν τηλεόραση. θὰ σοῦ πάρω ἴσως κι ἕνα τζίπ. θὰ σοῦ πάρω κι ἕνα ντουλάπι γιὰ τὰ ροῦχα σου. θὰ σοῦ ϕέρνω ὅσα μοσχολέμονα τραβάει ἡ ψυχή σου. ῾η ρόζα κοιτάζει τὰ ἡλιοκαμένα πόδια του, τὰ στραπατσαρισμένα πλαστικά του πέδιλα, τὰ χοντρά του δάχτυλα. ᾽απ ᾽τὸ μεγάλο δάχτυλο τοῦ ἀριστεροῦ του ποδιοῦ λείπει τὸ νύχι. Paul Lynch.Paul Lynch wrote the novel in Trinidad, where he was living, and it won the 2023 Booker Prize. Its title comes from a Latin phrase, 'nec plus ultra' — nothing further beyond.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Πιο Πέρα από τη Θάλασσα for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy lyrical fiction that lets landscape and weather shape the story more than quick turns of plot. Its pace is deliberate and the atmosphere heavy, so it may not suit you if you want a brisk, plot-driven sea story.
- What is Πιο Πέρα από τη Θάλασσα like?
- Lynch's prose moves with the swell of the lagoon: slow, lyrical, and thick with heat, longing and approaching weather. Feels like awe, longing and tenderness. About nature, love and time.
- What should I read after Πιο Πέρα από τη Θάλασσα?
- If you liked Πιο Πέρα από τη Θάλασσα, try The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway), The Call of the Wild (Jack London) and Toilers of the Sea (Victor Hugo).
A taste of the feed
The slow arithmetic by which longing turns into a habit.
The year advanced; the time came when the trellises were heavy with roses, and haunted by the butterflies. By little and little, he had come to conceal himself for hours behind her wall, motionless and silent, seen by no one, and holding his breath as Déruchette passed in and out of her garden. Men grow accustomed to poison by degrees.
Toilers of the Sea · Victor Hugo
A wind that carries every love story ever told.
Always it brought softly to him strange, sweet tidings of far-off things. It blew from a place that was old and whispered of youth. It blew down the grooves of time. It brought a story of the passing hours. It breathed low of fighting men and praying women. It sang clearly the song of love. That ever was the burden of its tidings—youth in the shady woods, waders through the wet meadows, boy and girl at the hedgerow stile, bathers in the booming surf, sweet, idle hours on grassy, windy hills, long strolls down moonlit lanes—everywhere in far-off lands, fingers locked and bursting hearts and longing lips—from all the world tidings of unquenchable love.
Riders of the Purple Sage · Zane Grey
What happens to a woman who has never needed anyone, the first time she does.
Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.
Far from the Madding Crowd · Thomas Hardy
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