Summer is a time for relaxation, it is also that of reading. This time I'm taking you to the coast of Spain for a treasure hunt…
La Carta Esférica was published in Spain in 2000, and in March 2001 for the French translation by François Maspero published by Editions du Seuil.
Arturo Perez Reverte
Born in Cartagena in 1951, War journalist reporter, he has covered armed conflicts around the world for over twenty years before devoting himself exclusively to writing literary. He published his first novel in 1986. Always on the edge of detective fiction, historical novels or documentaries, he was particularly eclectic in his choice of subjects. Several of his novels have met with deserved success : The Fencing Master, The Flemish Master's Painting, The Dumas Club, to name only the most famous in French, all adapted by the cinema. From 1996 down to 2006, He embarks on a series of novels The Adventures of Captain Alatriste (*) quickly very popular in Spain, recounting the many adventures of a 17th century Spanish captain, Diego Alatriste, mixture of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes at the time of the spanish grandees.
The Graveyard of the Nameless Boats
A suspended officer sailor, private sea, its only way of life. His meeting in Barcelona with a mysterious young woman with whom he falls madly in love. An 18th-century maritime atlas won at auction. A treasure hunter with unscrupulous methods. A brigantine sunk for more than two centuries at the bottom of the Mediterranean. These are the ingredients of a dangerous adventure in which the author takes us off the southern coast of Spain, and from which the hero will not emerge unscathed.
Adventure story, suspense, The Graveyard of the Nameless Boats is also a love story whose main heroine is the sea, and a tribute to all the novelists of the sea : Melville, Stevenson, Conrad, O'Brian, Poe…
Reverte brings her talent to great maritime literature, by a fascinating history, " Hymn to the magic gold of dreams ”, in which the dark side that man carries and which is revealed in the most extreme moments of his life is implicit.
Certainly, for yachtmen we are, a great relaxing time to study the spherical chart and let's immerse in warm seas of the Mediterranean…
Supposed location of Dei Gloria
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(*) All translated into French.
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Other titles in the Reading section
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It's true, but I never go back to Gibraltar without thinking about it. A third visit this year is scheduled in a few days …
A beautiful novel with some details on the history of cartography and more particularly of meridians. De Perez always reverts, obviously Captain Alatriste, but another very beautiful novel against a backdrop of trafficking in Gibraltar : The Queen of the South.
Ah, Queen of the South ! Based on a very real character, Mexico's Sandra Avila Beltrán, having lost two successive husbands in the narco-trafficking wars. Nicknamed "The Queen of the Pacific", Stopped in September 2007, she told her entire story lived in the midst of narco-traffickers and their links with the political and police powers of Mexico to a famous journalist, and published in 2008 La Reina del Pacífico : es la hora de contar...
What is a bit "disturbing" in this novel, it is that one would almost want to pity the heroine !…