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In 1518, a quarter of a century after Christopher Columbus, a Portuguese exile, Magellan, managed to convince the King of Spain, Charles I, to provide him with a fleet in order to explore the sea that separated Asia from America, the continent discovered by Columbus a few years earlier. At thirty-nine years old, he was in command of a fleet of five ships and 265 men, and began an episode that would mark the history of navigation and humanity. He returned three years later in a makeshift ship, with only eighteen men. A mutiny, cold, hunger, rivalry, cartographic errors... the famous adventurer will not be saved from anything. With his fluid and elegant prose, Zweig narrates Magellan's experience as a great adventure novel.