David Profumo
From Oh Dear To Oh Homo
It isn’t hard to see why literature has had such an affinity with islands. From Homer to Pratchett – via Swift, Defoe, Golding and Ballard – they offer microcosms, archetypes, fantasies, allegories, metaphors and utopias various. There are holy isles, prison colonies, hospital outposts, castaway crags, runaway boltholes, living laboratories, places of ostracism, escapism, treasure-seeking and despair. I have spent much of my adult life island-hopping, and occasional work has appeared everywhere from the Stornoway Gazette to the journal of the Kiribati and Tuvalu Philatelic Society: if that doesn’t qualify me as a nesophilic hack, then I might as well hang up my rusty rowlocks.
Readers expecting a feelgood gazetteer of romantic destinations will be brought up short by the subtitle to Judith Schalansky’s extraordinary and excellent book: ‘Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will’. A recent bestseller in her native Germany (she designed and typeset it herself), Atlas of Remote
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'In 2007, German scientists analysed the soil of this lunar landscape and found that 17 per cent of its weight was made up of arsenic. The ground wasn’t poisoned – it was poison.'
http://ow.ly/Ck7j50Er3mu
'Rivalries are intense and dangerous, and someone has to die.'
@NJCooper_crime on new thrillers by @HenryCPorter, @k_faulkner, @annafbailey, @mserinkelly, @JoelDicker, @AlanJParks, @whartonswords and more.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/april-2021-crime-round-up
This spring, give the gift of reading.
Give a friend a gift subscription to Literary Review for only £33.50.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/spring21/