Novels
Malo — Volume III — The Route of the Rising Sun
Malo — Volume III — The Route of the Rising Sun continues the maritime cycle begun in Saint-Malo and pursued across the Indian Ocean.
After the events of Madagascar, after the revelations linked to the atlas and to the hidden routes, the third volume opens a new direction: the East. The Route of the Rising Sun is not only a maritime route. It is a promise, a danger and a revelation.
Since the departure from Saint-Malo in 1540, Malo has crossed a world that was not meant for her. A slight red-haired young woman, forced to pass for a boy, she has learned to survive in the brutal universe of ships, of masculine hierarchies, of storms, of cannons and of secrets. She did not become brave because she was invincible. She became so because she had no choice.
The third volume must carry this evolution further. Malo is no longer only the one who observes. She becomes the one who understands that maps do not only serve for travelling. They serve to possess, to conceal, to betray, to orient the ambitions of kingdoms.
At the heart of the cycle stands the atlas. This atlas is not a simple object of adventure. It contains routes, ports, riches, clues to territories that Europe does not yet know how to name. It provokes desires, lies, pursuits and unstable alliances.
In the previous volumes, the Indian Ocean has appeared as a space of trade, of violence and of encounter between worlds: Madagascar, Mozambique, the Portuguese routes, the African, Arab, Indian, Malay and European presences. With The Route of the Rising Sun, the narrative turns towards the Far East, and in particular towards Japan.
This choice opens several stakes. First, a historical stake: the sixteenth century is a moment of shift. Europeans begin to understand that the seas are not only spaces to cross, but networks already inhabited, already organised, already contested.
Then a novelistic stake: each advance towards the East takes Malo further from her world of origin. Saint-Malo becomes a memory. La Vigilante becomes an unstable home. The atlas becomes both a chance and a curse.
Finally, an intimate stake: Malo must decide what she wants to do with what she knows. The title The Route of the Rising Sun suggests the opening towards Japan, but also an inner transformation. The rising sun can be a horizon, a rebirth, a promise. But it can also blind those who believe they are following it for glory, wealth or domination.
In this volume, European rivalries intensify. The Portuguese, the French, the merchants, the spies and the men of power seek to lay hands on the routes. But the novel must also show that Europe does not arrive in a vacuum. It enters already complex worlds.
Malo's destiny plays out in that gap. She comes from a French port, but she learns that the world does not begin with European maps. She discovers peoples, languages, ways of navigating, trading and thinking that her age does not yet know how to recognise fully.
The Route of the Rising Sun is therefore a novel of adventure, but also a novel of displacement of the gaze.
It poses an essential question: what does one become when the map one follows reveals a world vaster than everything one thought one knew?