The new novel to read by Diane Ducret

Diane Ducret

She stands out as the most inspired and prolific author of her generation. A true iconoclast, Diane Ducret questions society as closely as possible through her novels, historical stories and plays.

It was about love and power in his best-selling Women of Dictators , a bookstore phenomenon sold around the world. She addressed violence against women in The best way to walk is that of the flamingo . As for La Dictatrice, a visionary dystopia imagining a tyrant woman at the head of Europe, it is being adapted as a series in the United States.

A pitch worthy of the Little Prince and mythical biblical stories

Never where expected, Diane Ducre returns this time with The Master of the Ocean , a story that explores an unexpected genre: the philosophical tale. The author takes us into a singular universe that recalls The Little Prince , The Alchemist and the great epics of biblical stories and mythology, while inviting Nietzsche , Victor Hugo or Spinoza .

It is the incredible adventure of a young orphan destined to become a Taoist monk , crossing the seas aboard a freighter loaded with kiwis towards the French shores. Haunted by the idea of taming the great ocean, he hopes that it will answer the question that torments him: how to live when you have lost everything you love? Relentlessly, he confronts the elements, collides with the waves, his doubts, his grief. At the foot of Mont Saint-Michel , he undertakes the greatest of journeys: that of an intimate odyssey.

A universal fable

The Master of the Ocean is a universal fable on the quest for meaning, but it is above all a very personal book”, analyzes the author… “When the pandemic hit us and forced us to stay still, I felt asked what philosophy could help us get through this crisis ,” explains Diane Ducret . That's when I was lucky to have grown up by the ocean. Facing the ocean, we are never locked in, its waves wash and renew our thoughts, our sufferings. Facing him, we are in the presence of something bigger, more powerful than us, infinite, which connects people everywhere.

At the heart of the little boy's adventures, nature proves to be an inexhaustible source of meaning and courage. Diane Ducret summons Taoism as the best therapy for surviving the dramas of our time. “ I wondered what philosophy could help us through the current crisis in the West, the emptiness of meaning, our anxieties, especially after the pandemic. And I found that Taoism, still very little known to us, was the perfect answer, because it tells us about how to find our place in the universe, find harmony between man and nature, the body and the spirit, the good and the evil.... This book is like a great iodized breath!

The master of the ocean by Diane Ducret €18, published by Flammarion

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