Topsy turvy sea

Quite by chance, Rose, on a Mediterranean cruise with her children, meets Younès, who left his country on a makeshift raft along with a hundred other migrants. Staying in contact with the family via a telephone that Rose gives him, the young man becomes an intermittent and ghostly presence for them until the day when, held up in Calais, he calls Rose for help.

With La Mer à l’envers, her seventeenth publication with P.O.L., Marie Darrieussecq draws on a burning issue of the day to reveal our courage and our weaknesses, both as individuals and as a society.