I am not sure what to think of this novel by Nobel Prize Winner Le Clézio. It starts strongly, in the prologue, somewhere in France. The rest of the novel takes place in Mexico, where the author lived for a while. The main character is a geographer, Daniel Stillitoe, who participates in a broader academic project in which archeologists take the lead. He meets a young Inuit boy, Rafael, who lives in a Utopian community. Different world views collide and none of them succeed, each already presenting the germs of destruction before they come to full fruition.
The concept is interesting, but like so many utopian literature, also utterly boring. The personal tensions between the characters seem sought just to get some suspense in the story, which is a pretext to present world views. The ideal would be to have a perfect match between the abstract and the concrete, or to present the abstract through the struggles and dreams of the concrete, creating tension and suspense in the process, but that does not happen. There seems no obvious reason of why the main character does what he does, or why Rafael would do what he does, and why both characters would even be interested in each other. The emotional drivers seem absent.
As much as I liked his "Ritournelle De La Faim", as nonplussed I am by this novel.
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