Penguin Island

Saint Maël blesses a bronze hand-bell, casts it into the sea, and watches it ring its way to a distant convent. Years later, a stone trough carries him across the waves toward a calling less peaceful than the life he has built.

Anatole France opens in the windswept islands of medieval Brittany, where miracles and monastery business share the same solemn air. Now nearly ninety-eight, Maël must return to an abbey divided over the date of Easter and troubled by visits from the nuns of a nearby island. As he tries to restore peace, the venerable saint speaks with disarming candour about the temptations that trouble even a holy man. Can Maël bring his unruly community back to order—or will its earthly appetites prove stronger than its rules?

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