ATLAS OF REMOTE ISLANDS
Possession Island
Crozet Islands (France)
Indian Ocean
46° 24' S | 51° 45' E
FRENCH Île de la Possession
originally Île de la Prise de la Possession [›Appropriation Island‹]
150 km2 | 25-50 residents
IN I962, the French name their first mission to the northernmost massif after the greatest engineer of fantasy their country has ever produced. Today, a precipitous mountain range on the island of Possession and a crater on the far side of the moon – both just the kind of places that he might have travelled to on his extraordinary journeys – bear the name of Jules Verne. The man who waxed nostalgic over the future, and prophesied the past, compressed before and after and near and far into spaces that could be travelled through in patented machines as well-upholstered as the stories he told. Verne's novels are the equivalent of a visit to the World Fair, offering a naturally occurring cabinet of potential adventure, polished to a high technological sheen – daydreams for everyday use, atlases for those who stay at home. // His heroes are boys and young men who spend their lives travelling in an attempt to discover the secrets of the world through the acquisition of encyclopaedic knowledge: Dr. Samuel Fergusson, who claims, I follow no path – the path follows me, and Captain Nemo, the lover of the sea. // The journeys to the moon, to the centre of the Earth and to the underworld satisfy both boundless curiosity and the need for security. A few kilometres south of Mont Jules Verne, the river Styx flows from the lost lake into the open sea, which stretches to Antarctica. // This barren archipelago is so difficult to get to, you might think the only way to reach it was to be dragged by the constant drift of the west wind that pushes ships from Africa to Australia, dashing so many to pieces on this island's jagged cliffs, and then wrecked against its scattered basalt rocks. // But Jules Verne's mysterious island is far away, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and this is a most inhospitable place for any aspiring Robinson Crusoes.
Courtesy of Judith Schalansky and mareverlag, ©2009 mareverlag, Hamburg; ISBN 978-3-86648-683-6
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The crews on board the racing yachts of the Ocean Race whiz past the world's most remote islands without ever setting foot on them. Would they like to land there one day?
In her "Atlas of Remote Islands", Judith Schalansky takes us to islands "where I have never been and never will be". The author tells the absurdly unfathomable stories of these isles in a way that only reality can imagine.
Judith Schalansky has designed several of her books herself and received design awards for them. Both her "Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln" and "Der Hals der Giraffe" were honoured with the 1st Prize of the Stiftung Buchkunst. in 2021, her book "Verzeichnis einiger Verluste" was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. Judith Schalansky's books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
© mareverlag, Hamburg
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