In the interwar years, a transatlantic liner, the Virginian, traveled the routes between Europe and America, with its cargo of millionaires, tourists, and emigrants. An extraordinary pianist named Novecento played every night at the Virginian, with a wonderful technique, capable of pulling out magical, unheard of notes. There was talk of his unusual piano duel with none other than Jelly Roll Morton, the inventor of jazz. It was said that the melancholic pianist had been born on the ship, from which he would never have gotten off. It was said that no one knew the reason.

A theatrical monologue, recently made into a film by Giuseppe Tornatore with the title The Legend of the Pianist in the Ocean, of which Alessandro Baricco has stated: «More than a theatrical text, I consider it a short novel or a long story, emerging in the wake of of Ocean Sea, as if in this novel I had not been able to tell all the stories I wanted.