Les Trésors de la mer Rouge
Press copy, stamped as such.
Gary as he truly is: “a collector of souls… tormented by a taste for the ephemeral and, in the great tradition of Cendrars and Kessel, set loose here in a furnace teeming with sharks, crabs and snakes, where nothing is truer than legend, nothing more unreal than reality […]. Some will dislike the author’s tendency to indulge in effect. Others, more numerous, will love him for speaking from the heart and for often hitting the mark so precisely — as with what he says about the English and the beauty of Islam, which so seduced them that they wished to prevent it from changing” (Le Monde, 7 January 1972).
The novel was composed following a series of reports originally published in France-Soir, at the time when Romain Gary was serving as a diplomat in Abyssinia.
His attack on the West is exceptionally virulent: Gary denounces it as chiefly responsible for the abuses and killings it provokes or organizes in order to sell its weapons more profitably and secure its access to oil.
A very fine copy, a review copy with its original dust jacket in excellent condition, a rare state.