The raft
By: Arabella Edge
Edition: Large print ed.
Publisher: Thorndike/Chivers
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Waterville, Me; Bath
Language: eng
Number of pages: 483
ISBN-13: 9781405641968; 9781405641975
Subjects: Fiction; French Painting; Shipwrecks; Shipwrecks in art
Description: A tale of grand passion set in Paris in 1818, Inspired by the story of Theodore Gericault and his extraordinary masterpiece "The Raft of the Medusa". Aged just twenty-one, Gericault is feted at the prestigious salon for his painting Charging Chasseur. Seven years later lovesick and distracted by his secret affair with his benefactor uncle's wife, Alexandrine he is still desperately searching for inspiration for his next work. Then he hears about the French frigate Medusa, wrecked off the west coast of Africa. With a hundred and fifty souls abandoned on a makeshift raft, rumours of madness, murder and cannibalism horrify the French public but fascinate Gericault; when he manages to track down two of the raft's survivors to discover what really happened during those fifteen days at sea, he knows he has finally found his subject.
Notes: Originally published: as The god of spring. Australia: Picador, 2005; as The raft. London: Picador, 2006.