The Prospector [Paperback]

J. M. G. (Jean-Marie Gustave) Le Clezio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2008

The Prospector is the crowning achievement from one of France's preeminent contemporary novelists and a work rich with sensuality and haunting resonance. It is the turn of the century on the island of Mauritius, and young Alexis L'Etang enjoys an idyllic existence with his parents and beloved sister: sampling the pleasures of privilege, exploring the constellations and tropical flora, and dreaming of treasure buried long ago by the legendary Unknown Corsair. But with his father's death, Alexis must leave his childhood paradise and enter the harsh world of privation and shame. Years later, Alexis has become obsessed with the idea of finding the Corsair's treasure and, through it, the lost magic and opulence of his youth. He abandons job and family, setting off on a quest that will take him from remote tropical islands to the hell of World War I, and from a love affair with the elusive Ouma to a momentous confrontation with the search that has consumed his life. By turns harsh and lyrical, pointed and nostalgic, The Prospector is a parable of the human condition (Le Mond) by one of the most significant literary figures in Europe today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Le Clezio, who is best known for his Prix Renaudot-winning first novel, The Interrogation (1963), has created a gentle portrayal of a man haunted by visions of his ideal childhood. The round of seemingly endless summer seashore days and lessons at the knee of their mother, comes to an end for Alexis L'Etang and his sister Laure with their father's financial ruin and his death. The elder L'Etang's one legacy is an obsession with the treasure of the "Unknown Corsair," supposedly buried on Rodrigues Island. Determined to recapture their earlier prosperity, Alexis leaves for Rodrigues in 1910, where he is bewitched by the quest for the treasure, by the soothing routine of sunny days and by the love of a native girl, Ouma. Four years later his second idyll is interrupted by WW I and Alexis leaves the Indian Ocean for the very different geography of Ypres and the Somme. It is clear that Le Clezio, whose ancestor was a French corsair who settled on Mauritius, loves his setting--maybe too much. His writing is deeply evocative and descriptive even when simply furthering the plot, but many of his lengthy descriptions of Mauritius, Rodrigues and Alexis's ocean voyages between them are overwrought.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Haunting and lyrical, this Bildungsroman of the narrator's search for the lost treasure of the Corsair is near-mythic but has realistic details that bolster its plausibility. Set in early 20th-century Mauritius, the story follows the life of a young man who, after the death of his father, tries to restore his family's fortunes by tracking down some buried gold (hence the title); he is assisted by a young island woman, reminiscent of Rima in William H. Hudson's Green Mansions , who helps him recognize other things of value. The simple, exotic life of the islanders is portrayed appealingly, but realistic details of their exploitation by European colonists and the miseries of war are not left out. Le Clezio is an acclaimed winner of the French Prix Renaudot, and this novel, a best seller in France, will further enhance his reputation. Essential for academic and large public libraries.
- Ann Irvine, Montgomery Cty. P.L., Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine; First Paperback Edition edition (November 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567923801
• ISBN-13: 978-1567923803
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The two characters in The Prospector, April 19, 2009

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Barney Bales - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Prospector (Verba Mundi) (Hardcover)

The Prospector has in essence only two fully developed characters, the prospector himself and the Mascarene Islands. The author, who obviously loves the place, treats the islands off the African coast in the Indian Ocean as a beloved character describing in delicious detail the ocean, mountains, wildlife and plants. I usually tire easily of too much detail; however, it never seemed to be too much. The image of the angry birds coming to challenge the visitors and then coming to accept them is haunting. The vivid images of English Cove, that seems to be a creation of the author, made me feel like I was there.

The translation is superb, comparable to effort in Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda, leading one to forget that it is, in fact, a translation. I wonder if we give enough credit to these talented men and women who make the Nobel laureates and others accessible to a wide audience.

Concerning the second character, I had the feeling that Le Clézio was trying to create the purest character imaginable in Alexis similar to Doestoevky's effort in The Idiot. His devotion to his sister and mother, unsullied by the usual drives to the opposite sex, was trumped only by his obsession with the Corsair and finding the hidden treasure. His purity blends with that of another pure figure, a young woman who saves his life and goes on to teach him to forget about the treasure.

Read it; you'll like it.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Exquisite Dream, July 23, 2009

By 

Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Prospector (Paperback)

The title of this mesmerizing novel is misleading. The original French, LE CHERCHEUR D'OR, means literally "the seeker for gold." THE PROSPECTOR is an over-literal translation for such a poetic book, quite without metaphorical resonance. More important, it is a forward-looking word, whereas Le Clézio's protagonist is entirely concerned with looking BACK, trying to regain entry to an Eden from which he was expelled as a child. Fortunately the Gauguin pictures reproduced on both the paperback and hard-bound editions are perfect in their evocation of an almost unreal tropical paradise; if you respond to them, you are likely also to be drawn into the spell of this book.

The action, such as it is, is simply told. When the novel opens in 1892, Alexis L'Etang is a boy of 7, living on the coast of Mauritius, roaming the island with a native friend or sharing dreams with his beloved elder sister Laure. It is an idyllic life for a child, but it comes to an end when his father, a man of greater vision than business sense, is ruined by a devastating hurricane. After years of living in poverty, Alexis journeys by sailing ship to the distant island of Rodrigues, to pursue his father's tales of treasure concealed there by the Unknown Corsair. On the sea, and later living in a remote part of the island, he makes different discoveries from those he had expected. He also falls in love with a native girl, Ouma, who like him has turned back to nature after a convent education. World War I intervenes, and Alexis goes off to Ypres and the Somme, but returns to the islands to discover the true meaning of his quest.

Le Clézio does not so much describe things as evoke them by incantation. In reviewing ONITSHA, his masterpiece, I thought that his fondness for the heroic roll-call came from Homer, but the first influences on the young Alexis are less elevated: the adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard, the author of SHE:
--- Zweeke the sorcerer said, "You ask me, my father, to tell you of the youth of Umslopogaas, who was named Bulalio the Slaughterer, and of his love for Nada, the most beautiful of Zulu women." Each one of those names was buried deep in me, like the names of living people.

Throughout the book, Alexis conjures with the sheer sound of naming things: islands, mountains, rivers, trees, plants, birds. The book is written entirely in the first person, with very little dialogue, giving the rhapsodic effect of a waking dream, even amid the horrors of the Western Front:
--- What do these rivers we are always talking about look like... the Yser, the Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne, the Ailette, the Scarpe? They are rivers of blood flowing under low skies, thick, heavy water carrying debris from the woods, burned beams, and dead horses.

Or here, near the end, when the author merges past and present in timeless simplicity:
--- Our life on Mananava, far from other people, is like an exquisite dream. [...] At dawn we glide into the forest, which is heavy with dew, to pick red guavas, wild cherries, and cabbages, Madagascan plums, bullock's hearts, and bredes-songe and margosa leaves. We live in the same place as the maroons in Senghor and Sacalavou's time. Look there! Those were their fields. They kept their pigs, goats, and fowl there. And over there they grew beans, lentils, yams, and corn.

I have now read four Le Clézio books and some stories. All seem to be to some extent autobiographical, written out of a double loss -- his family removed from their home in Mauritius, and the author not seeing his father for the whole of his early childhood. The books feature travel and hardship, young protagonists in pursuit of some quest. They are filled with an aching nostalgia for a lost past, and with awe of the wild and ancient places of the earth and the secrets they may hold. In some ways, Le Clézio is a century behind his time; besides Rider Haggard, you can see the influence of Kipling and especially of Conrad. But his currency is modern; he deals in dreams. Let him once work his magic, then see if you can cast off his spell.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Love Letter To The Sea, April 9, 2011

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Daniel Myers (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Prospector (Paperback)

This "novel" is essentially one terrible and beautiful love letter to the sea. It is, au fond, more of a poem than a plot-driven narrative. I have no compunction at all in asseverating that the reader who does not feel or appreciate the power of the poetic will find nothing in this book to interest her/him. For me, the book was puissant and beautiful beyond all tears. Allow me to save the prospective reader some time by quoting the opening lines:

"As far back as I can remember I have listened to the sea; to the sound of it mingling with the wind in the filao needles, the wind that never stopped blowing....It is the sound that cradled my childhood. I can hear it now, deep inside me; it will come with me wherever I go....Not a day went by when I didn't go to the sea; not a night when I didn't wake up with my back sweaty and damp, sitting up in my cot, parting the mosquito net and trying to see the tide, anxious and full of desire I didn't understand.

I thought of the sea as human, and in the dark all senses were alert, the better to hear her arrival, the better to receive her. The giant waves leapt over the reefs and then tumbled into the lagoon; the noise made the air and earth vibrate like a boiler. I heard her, she moved, she breathed."

You may stop there. If you aren't enchanted already, the book is not for you. Search for something more prosaic and pedestrian - plenty of that sort of thing about. The only novel which this one resembles - and it is a VERY strong resemblance - is W.H. Hudson's Green Mansions (which I urgently press on all lovers of this book) with Alexis' Ouma taking the place of Rima, whose statue you can see in Hyde Park in honour of Hudson, if ever your travels should take you to London.

I don't know that there's much more I can add in laud of this beautiful and bittersweet novel in which waves of enchantment and disenchantment purl over the reader like strong tides over a bewitching, limitless seascape. I shall leave the final words to Alexis:

"Who can know their fate? It is written here, the secret that awaits me and that no one but I can unearth. It is written in the sea, on the spray of the waves, on the sky that covers us during the day, and in the unchanging constellations. How am I to understand what it says?"

This book will not help you to read what is written in water. But it will let you know that the writing is there for you.