An incredible, burlesque and epic story which remains full of surprises on an island of Sicily where the narrator was supposed to get married.
Hélène and the narrator are getting married. It’s been a year since they chose the location: the white island, a small and untamed island of the coasts of Sicily. The most idyllic setting for such an occasion. Everything is going as planned. The narrator is wearing his Batman costume – the perfect way to surprise his beloved and do away with the traditional codes of this type of celebration. But the evening takes a wrong turn after he carelessly throws his cigarette stub in a bush. In the span of a few hours, an entire part of the island goes aflame, forcing the guests to run away. The narrator barely makes it out, scooping up an uncounscious Hélène and driving away in the Italian place owner’s car. Thus begins an extraordinary story of wandering on Sicilian land, the narrator being sheltered by hosts as strange as they are welcoming (and indeed, the reader ends up discovering their involvement in a sad case of seahorse trafficking), one incongruous encounter after the other, each allowing him to improve his level of italian while his young bride is in the coma. Always with the utmost care for detail and digression, Romain Meynier naturally immerses the reader in a series of unlikely twists and turns as we follow his protagonist, perpetually out of touch with the world around him, and even more likeable for it.
