''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, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destin ...

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

côte d’Azur The French Riviera (known in French as the ; oc, Còsta d'Azur ; literal translation " Azure Coast") is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend fro ...

. 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 u ...

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 '' A ...

in London Review of Books 200
On we sail Afloat by Guy de Maupassant, translated by Douglas Parmée NYRB, 105 pp, £7.99

References

{{Guy de Maupassant 1888 novels Novels by Guy de Maupassant