''Afloat'' (French: ''Sur l'eau'') is an 1888 story by

Guy De Maupassant Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, celebrated as a master of the short story, as well as a representative of the naturalist school, depicting human lives, destinies and s ...

. Ostensibly it is a logbook of a nine-day cruise along the

côte d’Azur The French Riviera, known in French as the (; , ; ), is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is considered to be the coastal area of the Alpes-Maritimes department, extending fr ...

. The French original was given illustrations by

Édouard Riou Édouard Riou (; 2 December 1833 – 27 January 1900) was a French illustrator who illustrated six novels by Jules Verne, as well as several other well-known works. Life Riou was born in 1833 in Saint-Servan, Ille-et-Vilaine, and studied und ...

who the previous year had illustrated Alexandre Dumas' Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1887), and would also illustrate Maupassant's ''Un soir'' (1889). These illustrations, as engraved by the Guillaume brothers, were also included in the English translation by Laura Ensor published by Routledge in 1889. A new translation by Douglas Parmée appeared in 2009.

Julian Barnes Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with ''The Sense of an Ending'', having been shortlisted three times previously with ''Flaubert's Parrot'', ''England, England'', and ''Arthu ...

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of Book ...

200
On we sail Afloat by Guy de Maupassant, translated by Douglas Parmée NYRB, 105 pp, £7.99

References

1888 non-fiction books Works by Guy de Maupassant {{1880s-novel-stub