What can I say about a 140 page (including the index) book that lists isolated, secluded and mostly uninhabited islands around the world? It's wonderful! Delightfully deceptive I would say.The atlas gives each of the 50 islands 2 pages. One page has a beautifully rendered drawing of the island, the other page has facts and a short story about an island - a sort of snapshot of island events. The 50 islands represent all 5 oceans. The Pacific Ocean has the most islands listed. One is even said to have the remains of Amelia Earhart.
Schalansky has studied both maps and art and design and it shows in this book. The introduction is titled "Paradise is an island. So is hell." and the book shows that this is only too true. Schalansky has a love of maps that started as a young girl. She turned this love into this book. Many of the islands she writes about are uninhabitable, some cannot even be walked on. All are interesting in their own way.
This book is a wonderful piece of escapism to places that seem surreal but are not.
Check our catalog
No comments:
Post a Comment
We review all comments and reserve the right to remove comments based on: profanity, irrelevance, spam, personal attacks and anything else contrary to our guidelines.