Danaé Berrubé-Portanguen, known as Danaé Poussin, is an orphan who possesses the rare gift of knowing how to swim. Alternately a saviour and a shipwrecker, she lives in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on the island of Ys, where the locals are obsessed with honour and courage. An island where even land-dwellers boast of being sailors, where only the bravest are granted the privilege of living within the fortified city, safe from the great equinoctial tides. Following the fate of shore-dwellers who must share beaches and borders, Danaé Poussin submits to the cycles that animate the movements of the sea as well as those that govern the human heart.

Sailors Can’t Swim is for anyone who has wondered whether it was the rising waters that made them cry – or their tears that made the waters rise. Dominique Scali delivers a breathtaking maritime adventure novel, set in an alternative eighteenth century salty with sea spray and blowing with the cruelty of the wind.