The Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will by Judith Schalansky (translated by Christine Lo) was laid out with a detailed map on the right side of the page spread and text on the left. As a traveller who favours insular locales I can say that I have been to only one in this atlas–Tristan da Cunha–yet have plans to visit others, although they will most likely be the ones that are populated. I recognized the islands on the cover immediately. It’s the St. Kilda archipelago with Hirta, the largest one, in the centre. On my next trip to Scotland I hope to visit Hirta, so right away I can say that the next island in the atlas that I will likely visit will in fact be one that is now no longer inhabited.
The maps were beautiful and very descriptive, yet the text indicating their physical features was all in a small italic font, and I needed to use a magnifying glass to explore each island. Land features such as mountains and settlements were in black italics yet bodies of water like lakes and bays were all in white, which, set against a light blue background, made them unreadable no matter how hard I strained to see them.
Schalansky provided a short story about each island, none of which she acknowledged she wrote herself:
“I have not invented anything. However I was the discoverer of the sources, researching them through ancient and rare books and I have transformed the texts and appropriated them as sailors appropriate the lands they discover.”
Some of the islands are isolated as well as remote, such as Bouvet Island and Tristan da Cunha, while others are “merely” remote, such as Deception Island, which lies at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula yet is only 50 km away from other islands. I took plenty of notes as I read in order to learn more about some places and the intriguing stories Schalansky chose to tell about them, such as the UFO sightings over Trindade in 1958. I remember those grainy photos from UFO books and am only now making the connection to this Brazilian island. Some maps were enhanced by later Google Maps aerial searches, such as the C-shaped Île Saint-Paul and Deception Island.
A single typo on the last line of the last page ruined an otherwise flawless reading experience:
“All the islands in this atlas are depticted on a scale of 1:125000”