The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Fragments d’un paradis (Fragments of a Paradise). Unusually for Giono, this novel is set not in the beautiful French countryside but at sea. We follow a maritime expedition that sets out in 1940, to escape the problems of civilisation as the captain will continue to remind us throughout the book. It is a sailing ship so they will not have to land for coal and fresh water. The radio is locked away and never used. They do encounter the usual problems: storms, heavy winds, fog, becalming and the like. They also encounter many sea creatures, some we and the naturalist can identify but quite a few we and he cannot identify, including massive squids, whales and the like. They land only on Tristan da Cunhha which we know was inhabited at that time but, in this book, seems to have been recently abandoned. It is an interesting read, written between two prison sentences Giono had to undergo for pacifism but feels as though he had not finished it.