Voyage à Rodrigues
Presentation copy inscribed by the author: “Pour Maurice Nadeau, avec toute l’admiration et la fidèle amitié de J.-M. Le Clézio,” embellished with a small drawing of a volcanic island.
Inspired by the life of his grandfather, Léon, and drawing on both biblical and literary myth, this first-person journal is a sequel to Le Chercheur d’or (The Prospector). Le Clézio — descended from a Breton family that emigrated to Mauritius in the eighteenth century — had there traced the quest for a treasure buried on the island of Rodrigues, northeast of Mauritius.
In April 2018, the author unveiled a plaque on the island, on which he had engraved this passage from Voyage à Rodrigues: “There is a timelessness here, in Rodrigues, that is both frightening and tempting, and it seems to me that this is truly the only place in the world where I can think of my grandfather as someone still alive. Still visible, as if made only yesterday, are the pickaxe strokes he made on the wall of the ravine, at the far end of the cul-de-sac, to the right and to the left.”
A fine copy of fine provenance. Publisher’s wraparound band preserved.