The enigmas of islands

Phantom Islands – In Search of Mythical Lands Dirk Liesemer, trans. by Peter Lewis, London: Haus Publishing, 2019, £14.99 Dirk Liesemer is a writing Wandervögel, an epistolary inheritor of the romantically- imagined movement that flourished in Germany between the late nineteenth century and 1933. The ‘wandering birds’ took their inspiration from medieval myths, and made… Continue reading

Fortunate and unfortunate isles

FORTUNATE AND UNFORTUNATE ISLES Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands—Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will Judith Schalansky, London, New York: Penguin, 2012. 240 pp The West is writing over all the world’s white spaces. The unrolling triumph of Occidental enlightenment and exploration has meant the near-complete charting of the planet—conquest of the tallest peaks,… Continue reading