Schalansky’s introduction is titled “Paradise is an island, but so is hell.” Anyone looking for idyllic descriptions of pristine beaches or exotic plants will be deeply disappointed by this book. It’s no accident the stories that accompany many of these islands are grim. And Tikopia, where the local inhabitants enforce a strict population limit in order to survive sustainably. Norfold Island, site of the most feared penal colony of the British Empire. There’s Napuka, also known as Disappointment Islands, where Ferdinand Magellan and his starving crew stopped briefly while circling the globe only to find it devoid of food or fresh water. You are likely familiar with some of the islands already: Easter Island, Iwo Jima, Christmas Island, St Helena where Napoleon was exiled, Howland Island where Amelia Earhart was set to refuel before she disappeared into the Pacific. For each island Schalansky drew a detailed map, collected information about its location and history and inhabitants, and wrote stories essays prose poems difficult-to-categorize pieces to reveal something of the island’s essence. The book is exactly what it says it is: a collection of fifty remote islands from around the globe.

For me that book is Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will written, designed, and typeset by Judith Schalansky, and translated from German by Christine Lo. Maybe you have a book like this, a book that glows when you touch it, that you think about when it’s not around, the book that you’d run back into a burning building to save. When I spy it from across the room peeking out from my bookshelf or lying seductively open on my bedside table I feel things. It takes me new places, teaches me new things. This book delights me but also challenges me.

I think it is intelligent, funny at times, independent in spirit, honest. Can I say that? There is a book that I love like a person. This week Matt Weinkam shares his unabashed love for Judith Schalansky’s beautiful book Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will and its recent Pocket Atlas reissue.

Atlas of remote islands