Book Review: "Atlas of Remote Islands"

Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will

By: Judith Schalansky

Every review I have read about this book says it is amazing. There is a definite consensus that people find it to be beautiful, intriguing, and haunting. It even won the award for the most beautiful German book. The author, Judith Schalansky, is from Germany. When she was a child, she was fascinated by atlases. Until she was nine, East Germans were not allowed to leave their country with the exception of the Olympic team. It shocked her that on the map her country was as "pink and tiny as my smallest fingernail." She is very critical of the way maps are made and of their content. She writes, "The first atlas in my life was called Atlas für jedermann...I didn't realize then that my           

atlas - like every other - was committed to an ideology...I found out later, when I had to 

memorize the rivers and mountains of a home country that had more than doubled in size. Ever since then, I have not trusted political world maps, in which countries float on the blue ocean like vivid scarves. They grow out of date quickly and give barely any information apart form who is currently running which scrap of color." This book was originally published in German, all of the illustrations and design was done by Schalansky herself. She brings up deeply thought provoking ideas about the politics behind land ownership, the "merciless generalization, these maps tame the wilderness," and what has happened/happens on islands that are so remote they are often not included on the map. Her preface is entitled Paradise is an island. So is Hell. Interesting, because we often consider islands to be a desirable vacation getaway. She researched fifty of these remote islands, the second part of the book displays her illustrations and details about the islands. Some of the islands have chillingly frightening histories, written about in her poetic language. Of Lonely Island near Russia, she writes, "Loneliness lies in the centre of the Kara Sea in the northern Arctic Ocean...it is cold and barren." St. Kilda near the United Kingdom, was evacuated in 1930. Two-thirds of the new-born babies were dying within seven to nine days from an unknown illness. In my opinion, the most interesting island is Rapa Iti. Schalansky tells the story of a six year old boy named Marc who is "visited by dreams in which he is taught a completely unknown language." No researcher had ever heard it, or could figure out what language it was. As an adult Marc runs into a war veteran who remembers hearing the language on a very remote Polynesian island. In 1968 the island Fangataufa was used to test the first French hydrogen bomb. The residents had to be evacuated due to radioactive contamination and no one was allowed back for six years. On Pukapuka, "the young people...meet at the far edge of the beach once darkness falls. There they fight, dance, sing, and sleep with each other. Sex is a game, and jealousy has no place." I enjoyed these seemingly otherworldly, historical, and often strange stories. This is a good book to have on the coffee table, to ponder while laying on the couch wrapped in daydreams.

---Sara Moss