Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky

But in the big-spirited spiritedness of Mr. (When the little book showed up, my darling wife insisted we give it to our charmed friend who’s spent the past few years sailing around the globe on his goddamn charmed catamaran, winding up in New Zealand around the time of the Covid thing. The line maps are beautiful, but I’m no sailor.

This guy on Amazon was dissatisfied though: Schalansky’s Atlas is not-exactly history, not-exactly prose-poetry-it seems to evoke its own genre out of preexisting modes. And the thunderous echo of waves breaking against the hollows of the jagged coastline never ceases.” Of the antipodes the author writes, “cattle that are brought here die quickly and quietly in the dun-colored steppes of grass. Facts sit side-by-side with a kind of highly personal fiction we are given latitudes and detailed maps, but also lore and speculation. Kilda in the Atlantic, the Carolines of Micronesia, the American Pagan-is a prose poem of sorts. The book looks serious, until you read that quirky subtitle: it looks like a pocket atlas. At least, not too precious-despite the somewhat whimsical conceit, the author approaches her idiosyncratic task with seriousness. The subtitle is Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will, but don’t worry: this book isn’t precious. There’s a book I’ve returned to again and again, ever since its clementine-orange cover first caught my eye at a museum bookstore: A Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky, translated from the German by Christine Lo. It’s a beautiful big little small expansive book, as Sadie Stein attests in The Paris Review:

It even won the award for the most beautiful German book. There is a definite consensus that people find it to be beautiful, intriguing, and haunting. (For reading the whale book again, I think?) 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. I have no idea how Judith Schalansky’s Atlas was not on my atlas until earlier this month when BLCKDGRD sent me a copy.