Every spring the fishing schooners leave Paimpol in Brittany for the cod grounds off Iceland, and every autumn the women count who has come home. Gaud, a girl educated in Paris and returned to the Breton coast, loves the tall, proud fisherman Yann, who seems wedded to the sea, while his friend Sylvestre is called away to fight in the war in Tonkin.
Loti’s most famous novel, a lyrical portrait of a Breton seafaring community, in Jules Cambon’s translation. Download the free EPUB.