Le Chercheur d'or

The present tense seems to be more frequently employed by modern French novelists than by their British or American counterparts; but few contemporary writers can have resorted to it so consistently as Le Clézio. Concomitant with his absorption in a continuous present is an impulse to unrestrained extension.

Comme il est long, le temps de la mer! [Time measured by sea is so long!]

exclaims the narrator of his latest novel, the Mauritian Alexis L'Estang, resuming his obsessive search for pirate gold in the Indian Ocean on returning from service in the trenches of the First World War.
His story begins in 1892, when he is eight, and spans thirty years; yet despite the dates, the novel is in no sense a historical one, but could be most fittingly described as a fable.
Its characters are of quasi-archetypal simplicity, and they communicate in dialogue of taciturn breviloquence. Apart from the narrator's abiding but tenuous relationship with his sister Laure, the novel's principal human interest centres on his chastely erotic idyll with Ouma, the young native girl or "manaf" he finds on the island of Rodrigues, to which plans left him by his father have led him in search of a hoard of plundered gold concealed there by a legendary corsair.
Ouma is an archetype of the order of W. H. Hudson's Rima, or Rider Haggard's "Nada the Lily"
(referred to early in the book as the heroine of the favourite reading-matter of Alexis and his sister) David Gascoyne (The Times Literary Supplement of October 4, 1985)[2]

Reed Business Information, Inc.[3]

Le Clezio, who is best known for his Prix Renaudot-winning first novel, The Interrogation (1963), has created a gentle portrayal of a man haunted by visions of his ideal childhood. The round of seemingly endless summer seashore days and lessons at the knee of their mother, comes to an end for Alexis L'Etang and his sister Laure with their father's financial ruin and his death. The elder L'Etang's one legacy is an obsession with the treasure of the "Unknown Corsair," supposedly buried on Rodrigues Island. Determined to recapture their earlier prosperity, Alexis leaves for Rodrigues in 1910, where he is bewitched by the quest for the treasure, by the soothing routine of sunny days and by the love of a native girl, Ouma. Four years later his second idyll is interrupted by WW I and Alexis leaves the Indian Ocean for the very different geography of Ypres and the Somme. It is clear that Le Clezio, whose ancestor was a French corsair who settled on Mauritius, loves his setting—maybe too much. His writing is deeply evocative and descriptive even when simply furthering the plot, but many of his lengthy descriptions of Mauritius, Rodrigues and Alexis's ocean voyages between them are overwrought

Susan Ireland wrote this (which was published in the "Review of Contemporary Fiction")[4]

With its echoes of other famous quests, Alexis's search takes on mythical proportions and brings him face-to-face with the elemental forces of nature. The lyrical descriptions of the land and seascapes powerfully convey the entrancing rhythm of the waves that carry him on his journey and make The Prospector a novel of intense beauty

Dominic Di Bernardi of The Washington Post wrote :[5]

The Prospector offers a wonderful one-volume compendium of all the grand myths rooted in the European colonial experience, combining elements from Paul et Virginie, Robinson Crusoe, and Indiana Jones. Alexis, known as Ali, and his beloved sister, Laure, live in an Eden nestled on the island of Mauritius. A child drawn to nature, he is nevertheless most enthralled by his father's dreams of a privateer's treasure. Yet this same father's vision of bringing electricity to the island leads to the family's ruin (thanks to a ferocious hurricane, brilliantly described). To recover his family's paradise lost, the adult Ali embarks upon a hunt for the pirate's gold. "I left to put an end to the dream, in order that my life might begin. I am going to take this journey to its conclusion. I know that I will find something

• Le Clézio, J. M. G (1985). Le Chercheur d'or (in French). Paris: Gallimard, Folio. p. 375. ISBN 978-2-07-038082-4.

• Le Clézio, J. M. G; translated by Carol Marks (1993). The prospector. Boston,MA, USA: David R. Godine "A Verba mundi original". pp. 375. ISBN 978-0-87923-976-3.