An unlikely set of six, each obsessed with the sea, each burdened with a problem, arrive at Almayer: a seaside inn on an unknown shore inhabited only by four “precocious, spirit-like children”. Their back stories and present lives intersect in the most unpredictable ways resulting in a seemingly disjointed plot that Alessandro Baricco skilfully weaves into a single narrative strand.

Among the travellers is a painter who is determined to find where the sea begins and paints “the sea with the sea” dipping his brush into the surf and smearing it on white canvases, and a professor who wants to know precisely where the sea ends – the point at which waves break on the shore – for the Encyclopaedia of Limits he is writing. For them, the “sea is a place where you take leave of yourself”.

Reading Ocean Sea is a leap of faith, as you cannot understand what is going on and why, but there are passages of extraordinary depth and beauty that take you to the heart of life. And then, almost miraculously, it all comes together. The jigsaw is completed.

The novel won the Viareggio Prize, a prestigious Italian award named after the Tuscan city.

Published in Italian in 1993. Translated into English by Alastair McEwan, published in 1999.