by JohnDavidMorley (Author)
For Daniel Serraz, born on a ferry in the Straits of Malacca, orphaned two years later when his parents are lost at sea, the world beneath the waves holds an irresistible fascination. Raised in Geneva by his hydrophobic grandmother, his boyish imagination stirred by the local pet-shop's aquaria, Daniel free-floats with life's currents into a career in insurance and marriage to Japanese interpreter Kozue. But ominous truths are re-surfacing, bound up with the legend of his whale-hunter great-grandfather and his parents' disappearance off the Indonesian coast. When calamity scars his marriage and devastates his health, at the risk of his own survival, Daniel pursues his sea-borne destiny to the far-flung island of Lefo, where whales are still hunted by century-old methods and native superstition tells of a mythical makhluk istimewa, an 'extraordinary creature' still inhabiting the surrounding seas.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Phoenix
Published: 06 Jul 2006
ISBN 10: 0753820889
ISBN 13: 9780753820889
Book Overview: 'Morley's cool, spare words are vividly evocative' Independent 'Morley's evocation of place is passionate and absorbing - the exotic locations are realised as vividly as the characters - and the story has a heady tang of ancient myth and old-fashioned adventure' The Times 'Morley writes intensely beautiful prose, and delivers a haunting elegy for an already vanished culture that will more than reward' Daily Mail 'The writing is superb... There is beauty in strange places in Morley's haunting scheme' Sunday Telegraph 'A marvellous and original work of fiction' Melvyn Bragg, Observer Books of the Year