An evocative narrative recounting the last weeks of a great artist: Gauguin. A riveting read to the very last page.
When in 1901 Paul Gauguin decided to move to the Marquesas Islands, he never imagined he would die there. His restless character took him from native Peru to France, then to Tahiti and finally to the Marquesas Islands, forcing him to travel further afield in his search for a primitive society, an uncontaminated land. ‘I wanted to return to the wild origins of art,’ he wrote. But then his dissolute life, the effects of alcohol abuse, drugs, and finally syphilis, condemned the great artist to a miserable end: alone and almost forgotten by his Parisian friends.
The narrative peg on which this novel is hung is a day in Gauguin’s life at Hiva Oa, a few weeks before his death. His conversations with the locals, his troubled relations with the French settlers, administering these lands with indescribable arrogance; the stories of the natives, the freedom of their customs and the descriptions of the lush landscapes, inhabited by women of haunting beauty, nurture the pages of a book that will enchant readers.