Tanah is a vulcanologist. She has lost count of the number of volcanoes she has studied, monitored and delighted in over the course of her adult career. But she can still remember another life as the daughter of a king and ousted sovereign who was exiled on a stunning archipelago called Outermost Fringe in the blue expanses of the Frenetic Ocean. Like all those who have spent time on an island, Tanah is able to travel back in her mind to when she was nine and everything turned upside down. She can recall her father, that poetic wanderer who instilled in her the wonder of dreams but also warned her of their destructive power.

In this beautiful and serious novel that plays lovingly with words and geographies, MarieSabine Roger revisits that struggle called childhood and reminds us that our dormant need for fiction can be awakened and take possession of us to the point of madness.