A nautical chart can be much more than an indispensable instrument to navigate from one place to another; it is an etching, a page from history, and sometimes even an adventure novel. Just published by Alfaguara, La carta esferica by Arturo Perez-Reverte is the story of a sailor without a ship, exiled from the ocean, who meets a woman who returns to him the adventure of the sea. Never have the ocean and its history, the science of navigation, adventure and mystery, been combined in such an extraordinary manner as is done in this novel. Only Arturo Perez-Reverte could have accomplished this.