The sea is something entirely other; one cannot live hastily in it nor survive it with fear. The Sea Men—sailing rough waters many times over without knowing whether they will ever make it out unhurt or find in the depths their final resting place—are well aware of this.

Life at sea is hostile, hard and dangerous, and yet these brave men feel like fish out of water when they have to stay on dry land. Life on the sea penetrates their skin, and they would seem not to know how to live when not working. It is sad to see them staring at the sea, with dry feet, looking disoriented.

What manner of courage and madness makes a man enter a rough sea and sail in nut-sized ships that get tossed around and lost in the vast oceans?

“A Man at Sea” is a fiction—albeit one cut from the daily lives of these men—and the descriptions, filled with beauty and harmony, allow the reader to discover poetry where only grief and sorrow were found before, even if one had studied such lives in detail.

Alves dos Santos’ words envelop the reader and open porthole to the characters’ lives; the reader dives into “A Man at Sea” and finds themself immersed in both an intimate transparency and a world of skies and light that slowly change, as though they were the rocking sea.

In this book, the author manifestly pays a most heartfelt tribute to all the Sea Men—in particular to those of Machico, his homeland.