Turtle Island: A Journey to the World's Most Remote Island [Hardcover]

Sergio Ghione (Author), Martin McLaughlin (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 8, 2003

Ascension Island is a wilderness of volcanic rock, land crabs, and stray donkeys in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It erupted into existence about 600 years ago and was discovered by the Portugese in 1501. However, it was only when Napoleon was exiled to nearby St. Helena that the island gained strategic importance and was snatched up by the British. It went on to become a crucial "node" in both world wars and the Cold War. The 1960s saw the building of a NASA base which was crucial to the Apollo missions. The thousand or so people who live on this island now do so because they have been brought here by their work for NASA as fishermen, or simply to service the existence of the colony. Ghione's work was to travel there to study Ascension's most famous inhabitants: the extraordinary sea turtles that arrive each year to lay their eggs. Combining history, science, geography, and journalism, this quirky and charming book is a wonderful tale about a very peculiar place - a tiny piece of Britishness absurdly at odds with the reality of its bleakness and isolation. Ghoine has a sharp eye for the curiosities of island life, such as the single grocery shop that sells Christmas goods year round, the ritual of throwing paint at a particular curbstone, and many more. Come and experience the strange world of Ascension Island first-hand!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this historical travelogue of the isolated Ascension Island, Ghione goes to the ends of the earth but finds little save for giant green turtles. Ascension, a British colony in the middle of the Atlantic, lies 1,000 miles off the coast of Africa, near the equator. Ghione, a research scientist with the National Research Foundation in Pisa, Italy, went to Ascension to learn how green turtles find their way to the island each year to nest. At the time, his research was inconclusive-scientists have since shown they probably sniff the air-but Ghione has other purposes. He's seeking a secluded place for reflection and observation, a "geographical-metaphorical entity." He writes of his time on Ascension in plain, simple prose, but occasionally, the island's sparsely populated landscape moves Ghione to expand: "In the distance a desolate, ghostly mountain stands out against the pearl-colored sky, wrapped in wisps of cloud like smoke trailing from its entrails." He spends his days playing chess, drinking and tagging turtles with radio transmitters. Although there are occasional visitors and a few conversations with locals, most of Ghione's efforts involve chronicling the island's history. In the end, readers will note that in remote places, there's not much trace of the past. Despite an appendix and lists of Web sources, much of the book feels dated. When Ghione finished writing it in 1999, he needed permission from the British military to visit Ascension. Since then, a small tourist industry has burgeoned there. This is good news to visitors, but it also means the island Ghione visited isn't there anymore.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

International Praise for Turtle Island:

"In a laconic and conversational style, [Ghione] seamlessly weaves the historical with the geographical, and his descriptions are often pleasingly tangential, melding descriptions of the island's past and present inhabitants with observations on its ecological make-up (the green sand, the world's worst golf course)."
- The Times Higher Education Supplement

"A wondrous book...The original purpose of the trip moves to the background as [Ghione] writes about the island and its solitude, about people and life. And then all of a sudden it is there again. Precise, scientific. Two parallel threads which are only apparently apart. A very remarkable new publication."
- NRZ am Sonntag (Frankfurt, Germany)

"[A] beautiful book." - Sole 24 Ore (Milan, Italy)

"In [Ghione's] fascinating book he mixes objective, scientific accounts with digressions into geography and history."
- Der Standard (Vienna, Austria)

"A fascinating voyage through history and geography...[Ghione] gives beautiful and vivid accounts on the volcanic nature of the island, of its colonial history, and of its present role as a telecommunication center for satellites."
- Frankfurter Neue Presse (Frankfurt, Germany)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (December 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312310951
• ISBN-13: 978-0312310950
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,363,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A looking glass view on a remote and largly unknown place., December 24, 2003

By 

Movie buff (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turtle Island: A Journey to the World's Most Remote Island (Hardcover)

"Turtle Island" is a excellent little book that not only provides a brief history of Ascension Island, but also wonderfully portrays the author's experiences of life on that remote spot about which few know or care. For sometime, I have been fascinated with this place and "Turtle Island" gave me a window on Ascension that is valuable, as realistically I will probably never get around to visiting the island.

Filled with interesting anecdotes about life on Ascension and the work of visiting biologists studying the migration habits of the Green Turtle, "Turtle Island" is a quick, entertaining, and informative read. The thoughtful author has also compiled a "webography" to assist those readers who desire more information about Ascension Island via the Internet.