Prosper: A Voyage at Sea

Short Blacks

by Simon Leys

A big liner, brightly lit, passes us one or two cable-lengths ahead. ‘Ow! They are guzzling champagne but cannot see what's in front of them!’ grumbles Etienne, who has the helm and puts Prosper back on course. Our wooden boat, which one long wave can carry, is a mere cork in the wake of that ship, which crushes three dozen such waves under her uncaring steel plates. How many hundreds of men does she carry? Up there, people laugh, play, dream, eat and sleep … while we, a few feet above the water, surrounded by dancing lights, keep watch till dawn.

One summer, Simon Leys joined the crew of a tuna-fishing boat in Brittany, one of the last boats working under sail. In this exceptionally beautiful and elegiac essay, he evokes the traditions, hardships and dangers of the oldest and finest form of seamanship.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

64 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 2015

About the author

Simon Leys is the pen-name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. He taught Chinese literature at the Australian National University and was Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney from 1987 to 1993. He died in Sydney in 2014.

Writing in three languages - French, Chinese and English - he played an important political role in revealing the true nature of the Cultural Revolution. His many prizes include the Prix Renaudot, Prix mondial Cino Del Duca and the Christina Stead Prize.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essay chapbook about Leys’ time on one of the last tuna fishing boats under sail off Brittany. Like all maritime lit, full of stock characters and situations: the stern skipper, the lovable drunk, the storm, the encounter with a huge liner. Like all maritime lit, very enjoyable—about the level of a good old school NYer piece. Loved the character sketches that double as scene-setting, in particular the description of the 13-year-old cook and his galley.