Le Chercheur d’or

Inspired by the adventures of the author’s paternal grandfather, Léon Le Clézio, Le Chercheur d’or (The Prospector) is set on the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues. Driven from their estate at Boucan by bankruptcy and a cyclone, the narrator, Alexis L’Étang, is left with a single desire: to fulfill his father’s dream by finding the treasure of a corsair, said to be hidden on Rodrigues Island, “a paradise on earth” where pirates came to die in the eighteenth century. “It is a novel of adventure and initiation akin to Stevenson’s Treasure Island, in which Jim, the hero, sets sail to discover treasure buried on an island. The initiation begins with a break from the world of childhood […] and evokes several literary myths, including those of Paul et Virginie and Robinson Crusoe […] in search of spiritual truth and inner harmony before the beauty of the world.” (B. Chahine, Dictionnaire Le Clézio).

“Literature is a form of adventure, whose end and outcome one does not know but which one can prolong, make swerve, by writing. […] My grandfather never found the treasure — he said so in one of his letters — but he put everything back exactly as it was so that someone else might take up the search. He was a dreamer, but a meticulous one, leaving behind a very detailed plan of a world that does not exist” (interview with Augustin Trapenard, 21 cm, 2018).