In the introduction Judith Schalansky – a designer and typographer (of course), an author and a teacher – describes how, as a child born in East Berlin, she became an armchair traveller at an early age. The very title of the introductory essay is: “Paradise is an Island. Accounts of lonely scientists and erotically disturbed merchants. Stories of rape, incest, murder and cannibalism. Here are tales of castaways and disappointed explorers, mutiny and rebellion, insanity and corruption.
The crash when the desert island paradise romance runs full tilt into the sometimes sordid, sometimes horrific, sometimes cryptic, sometimes heart-wrenching reality. However the Atlas of Remote Islands is also beguiling because of the clash it illustrates. The full sized version would adorn any bookshelf. The pocket version that I have is something you want to carry about with you. The quality of the paper, the printing, the binding – the care that has gone into creating it. The book is delightful for its beauty and elegance. And for each the distances from three other pieces of dry land at three different points of the compass, and the merest outline sketch of a timeline. Brief notes on the islands, what they are called – or have been called – their allegiances (which states claim sovereignty), their physical sizes, populations or otherwise. Fifty delicately drawn maps, all to the same scale. In one sense, it is a gazetteer of fifty islands scattered about the globe with snippets of the stories – often just one story – and people associated with each. It is fascinating for the information it contains.
This is a most fascinating, delightful and beguiling book. Translated from the German by Christine Lo Fifty islands I have not visited and never will
0 kommentar(er)
