An Iceland Fisherman
Pierre Ebert Loti
Paperback
(Forgotten Books, Oct. 15, 2008)
An Iceland Fisherman (French: Pecheur d'Islande, 1886) is a novel by French author Pierre Loti. It depicts the romantic but inevitably sad life of Breton fisherman who sail each summer season to the stormy Iceland cod grounds. Literary critic Edmund Gosse characterized it as "the most popular and finest of all his writings." Loti's style is a combination of the French realist school, such as Emile Zola, and impressionism, such as Monet. As Jules Cambon says, Loti wrote at a "..time when M. Zola and his school stood at the head of the literary movement. There breathed forth from Loti's writings an all-penetrating fragrance of poesy , which liberated French literary ideals from the heavy and oppressive yoke of the Naturalistic school." Loti uses a simple vocabulary, "but these words, as used by him, take on a value we did not know they possessed; they awaken sensations that linger deeply within us." The characters are humble and simple working class people, the incidents are normal every day affairs, dealing with the themes of love and separation. (Quote from wikipedia.org)About the AuthorPierre Loti (1850 - 1923)Louis Marie-Julien Viaud (January 14, 1850 - June 10, 1923) was a French sailor and writer, who used the pseudonym Pierre Loti.Viaud was born in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, France, to an old Protestant family. His education began in Rochefort, but at the age of seventeen, being destined for the navy, he entered the naval school in Brest and studied on Le Borda. He gradually rose in his profession, attaining the rank of captain in 1906. In January 1910 he went on the reserve list.His pseudonym has been said to be due to his extreme shyness and reserve in early life, which made his comrades call him after le Loti, a