New Caledonia (France) / All works
Novel
Le Rocher à la voile
Not translated into English
Alin Laubreaux · 1930
Synopsis
At the entrance to the port of Nouméa, a sail-shaped rock watches over four destinies that the novel interweaves, those of the sailor Chantrel, captain of the Pervenche, the free settler Breton, the Kanak employee Gabriel and the former convict Herbignac, who works among the miners of Pam. Their paths meet around the trading house of Ballourde, which holds the colony in its grip, in a colonial society made of petty passions and indifference.
Context
Published in Paris by Albin Michel in 1930, the novel turns its back on postcard images: the entry devoted to it by the Vers les îles website sees it as the antithesis of the exotic novel, and as the critique of a narrow colonial society. Louis Lagarde, a researcher at the University of New Caledonia, recognises in the house of Ballourde, with its transparent name, the house of Ballande, and quotes the sentence “The house of Ballourde is stifling the colony”. The book was reissued in Nouméa by Grain de sable in 1996, with a preface by Liliane Laubreaux.
Who it is for
An interwar novel about the colonial society of Nouméa, written by a native of the country who became a journalist of the collaboration.
Prizes and reception
In 1998, the review Notre Librairie presented its author as a writer little known in New Caledonia.
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