Have you seen whales frolicking in the sea–giant masses of shiny wet flesh gracefully rising up into the air and then just as gracefully plunging back into the water? They do it not to catch flies as trout do, food always on their tiny minds, but to delight at their ability to do it, delight at being whales. I rise and plunge, says the whale, therefore I am! And so it is with Eckhard Gerdes in his massive, whale tale kind of a book, The Chronicles of Michel du Jabot–he is not after seducing a reader or two with a suspenseful story into purchasing his book but to exercise the writer in himself, delight at his ability to use language. Gerdes is because he writes. – Yuriy Tarnawsky, from the introduction

Fiction.