Voyage to Desolation Island (Hardcover)

Amazon.co.uk Review
Voyage to Desolation Island was first published in France in 1993. How come, then, it has taken so long to cross the Channel? Had the book been gathering dust, an undiscovered masterpiece? Or was the French so tricky that it took eight years to translate? The answer, sadly, is almost certainly more prosaic, owing more to cultural parochialism than anything else. Almost every European country tends to have annexed one or more of the world's more remote areas which, over time, have become part of that nation's consciousness. In Britain, for example, there are South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, a windswept archipelago of no strategic importance some 8,000 miles away, but one that was apparently worth fighting the Argentines for in the early 1980s. The French have the Kerguelen Islands, possibly the most desolate land area on the globe, situated midway between Africa and Australia, just above the Antarctic circle. The islands were first sighted in 1772 by a French seafarer, and for the last 200 years have largely bypassed the British psyche--until the Times columnist Matthew Parris made a big splash by hightailing there two years ago, which presumably explains the timing of this translation. Those who enjoyed Parris' newspaper reports will appreciate the more lyrical expansive writing of Jean-Paul Kauffmann. Unlike Parris, Kauffmann is no stranger to hardship--he was held hostage in Beirut for three years in the mid-1980s--and he appears to relish the hardships.

His writing is often as bleak and sparse as the islands themselves, and there is often an emotional distance between himself and the people he meets; Kauffmann is far more connected when he recounts the islands' history than when he lives its present. Voyage to Desolation Island is a wonderful meditation on solitude and alienation, but one can't help wondering whether Kauffmann doesn't unwittingly reveal as much about the price he paid for three years in captivity as he has about the Kerguelens. --John Crace

Review
"Written between every line are the sufferings of his own captivity; his own struggle to come to terms with the loss of freedom, hope and time" Andrea Stuart, The Independent of The Dark Room at Longwood; "The story of Napoleon's last years is beautifully interwoven with Kauffmann's attempt to understand how Napoleon felt in captivity... On these pages the very ghost of loneliness walks, vaporous, interminable" Susan Salter-Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

Voyage to Desolation Island offers the reader the excellent value of three tales in one. Firstly it is a travelogue to one of the most remote and lonely places on earth, Kerguelen Island. For Kaufmann who had recently spent three years as a hostage in Beirut to choose to undertake such a journey in itself appears remarkable, though a certain logic silently unfolds in subtext. Secondly, it offers a history of the island and its visitors, from their disgraced discoverer Yves-Joseph Kerguelen, who claimed the islands in the name of France but never set foot ashore, to present-day scientific expeditions. And finally, woven into the other stories is the author's metaphysical quest to discover meaning in the barren landscape. Kauffmann is a man with a romantic imagination, matched with an equally romantic turn of phrase. Nor is he averse to the inclusion of a Biblical quotation on the slightest pretext. At times, however, he attempts to spice up the action with excessive conjecture. Nonetheless, a history of one of the few remaining natural places on earth and travelogue of an extraordinary man in extreme conditions. This has much of interest to capture the reader. (Kirkus UK)

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