Excerpt from The Island of the World

"Josip, tomorrow you will see a great thing", says his father as they rise by candlelight before dawn, putting on their clothes beside the stove while mother makes a fire. "You will see the waters of the Adriatic."

"Is it like a lake?" Josip asks. He has seen photographs of the ocean in one of his father's books, but it is hard to tell its size from them.

"Much bigger than a lake."

"How big is it, really, Tata?" he presses with earnest curiosity, for he believes that his father has an answer for everything.

"It is beyond measuring, Josip."

"Is it as big as the sky?"

"That is a difficult question. When you go there you will see that the sky above it is greater than the sky above our mountain."

Josip furrows his brow in concentration.

"This I do not understand!"

"You must see it with your own eyes and then you will understand."

The boy closes his eyelids and touches them with his fingertips.

"The sea will show you many things, Josip."

..."We will bring no books", the father answers. "Instead we will see with our own eyes what Odysseus saw. We will see the waters he sailed upon in Argo.

"Will we see monsters?"

"That is always possible."

~Excerpt from The Island of the World by Michael O’Brien