Magris’ novella is a masterpiece that manages both to be philosophical and to rescue a part of Italian history: the period during which Gorizia, near Trieste, was the ‘Hapsburg Nice’. The book’s protagonist Enrico, brought up in the multicultural embrace of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire (which held lands inhabited by Italian, Slav and German-speakers in the area where Ex-Yugoslavia and Italy meet), sails off to Patagonia to carve out for himself a simple and honourable existence. This book covers the distance between Europe and South America, between adolescence and middle age, between classical and contemporary values. Its story of voluntary renunciation of material well-being and human company is so out of keeping with the inflamed consumerism of today that it can exert a real force on the reader.


Written with economy and power, A Different Sea is perhaps one of the best works of contemporary Italian literature. Magris, who can be prodigious as a writer (his Danube runs for 416 pages) has here produced a sparkling little book for seekers after truth, as good an account of a man’s spiritual trajectory as Herman Hesse’s marvellous Journey To The East.

‘Nussbaumer was right to insist that Greek be translated into German, for they are the two indispensable languages, perhaps the only languages in which birth and death can be discussed. Italian is different. Italian for him is not the language of statements, or of definitions which stun with their brightness or their space. Instead it is the language of postponement, of digression, the language for coming to terms with the unbearable, for keeping destiny at bay for a while by dint of constant chatter. In short, Italian is the language of life, the language of reconciliation, of indebtedness like life itself, or, at most, like a suit — worn to satisfy social convention.’ p9