Praise for the French edition

“The flourishing memory of the overseas territories is constitutive of French history and identity. . . . It is one of the contemporary paradoxes, moreover, that this book brilliantly brings to light: those who are nostalgic for the empire on which the sun never set are the quickest to refuse the best things to come from the overseas territories. Mémoires d’Outre-Mer is undoubtedly, resplendently, one of them.”

—Bertrand Leclair, Le Monde

“A very beautiful piece of French prose. A writer who transcends banality, with a purity of writing.”

—Sébastien Lapaque, Le Figaro

“Mémoires d’Outre-Mer is one of the most beautiful novels of this season, with all that you would want from a novel. . . . Add to that the cleverness of the novel’s form (a hint of a detective investigation into the occupant of a nameless grave), which closes where you had opened it, and especially the beautiful language of Michaël Ferrier, who makes literature from many different written sources.”

—Jean-Baptiste Harang, Le Magazine littéraire

“With his remarkable Mémoires d’Outre-Mer, Michaël Ferrier explodes all boundaries, all borders, geographical and mental. . . . With this novel, and its superb style, he enriches and renews the image that we might have of this country (Madagascar), which is much more than its lemurs and deforestation. The author also reflects on the notion of identity. ‘To understand what France is, you have to go and look elsewhere,’ he writes. It is the object of the book to show that France is not a small hexagonal space but a limitless territory, steeped in its history here and elsewhere, nourished by the experiences of all those it has welcomed. This very topical book is essential reading.”

—Muriel Mingaud, Le Populaire

“What is the only thing that can fight against death? Memory. That’s it. Ferrier has written an adventure novel on memory, a singularly intelligent novel.”

—Vincent Roy, Art Press

“This rich novel (the term does not do the work justice) lives up to its title [and is] driven by a conviction to record the reality of a world made from diversity.”

—Valérie Marin la Meslée, Le Point

“Great novels are like cyclones. They announce themselves in shudders, rustling, little shakes, and through narrative workings, these currents of hot air grow in strength and vigor; they rise like waves, breaking and multiplying in flashes and splinters, and become the very movement of the novel. Mémoires d’Outre-Mer is a literary cyclone, an art of the wind, the story of a man of the wind, a man who flies free, over an island and a time, and who grapples with the betrayals of history. . . . The important novelists are always precise and informed historians, their ears are as fine and sharp as their pens, and they possess their own knowledge and style—that divine blessing.”

—Philippe Chauché, La Cause littéraire