"A haunting tale of strange and random passion."--New York Times

Disaffected, bored with his career at the French Colonial Ministry (where he has copied out birth and death certificates for eight years), and disgusted by a mistress whose vapid optimism arouses his most violent misogyny, the narrator of The Sailor from Gibraltar finds himself at the point of complete breakdown while vacationing in Florence. After leaving his mistress and the Ministry behind forever, he joins the crew of The Gibraltar, a yacht captained by Anna, a beautiful American in perpetual search of...

"Duras's language and writing shine like crystals."--New Yorker

A man--the traveler--arrives in the seaside town of S. Thala with the intent to abandon his present, and instead finds himself abruptly reintroduced to his past. Through his subsequent interactions with "her," the woman to whom he was briefly engaged as a young man over twenty years ago, and "him," the man who walks and keeps watch over "her," the traveler is soon drawn back in and acclimated to the strange timelessness and company that is S. Thala.

Written in a stark and cinematic narrative style, this...