Afloat

<i>Afloat </i>originally published as <i>Sur l&#146;eau </i>in 1888 is a book of dazzling but treacherously shifting currents a seemingly simple logbook of a sailing cruise along the French Mediterranean coast that opens up to reveal unexpected depths as Guy de Maupassant merges fact and fiction dream and documentation in a wholly original style. Humorous and troubling stories unreliable confessions stray reminiscences and thoughts on life love art nature and society all find a place in Maupassant&#146;s pages which are in conception and in effect so many reflections of the fluid sea on which he finds himself&#150;happily but forever precariously&#150;afloat. <i>Afloat</i> is thus a book that in both content and form courts risk while setting out to chart the meaning and limits of freedom a book that makes itself up as it goes along and in doing so proves as startling and compellingly vital as the paintings of Maupassant&#146;s contemporaries van Gogh and Gauguin.