Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR

In Island Dreams, Gavin Francis combines stories of his own travels with psychology, philosophy and myth, shedding new light on the importance of islands and isolation in our collective consciousness.

Francis draws on thirty years of island adventures from the Faroe Islands to the Aegean, from the Galapagos to the Andaman Islands. He contrasts these quests for freedom with the demands for commitment required as a doctor, community member and parent. Island Dreams riffs on the twin poles of rest and motion, independence and attachment, never more relevant than in today’s ever-connected world.

Gavin Francis is an award-winning writer and GP. He is the author of eight books of non-fiction, including Adventures in Human Being, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, and Empire Antarctica, which won Scottish Book of the Year in the SMIT Awards and was shortlisted for both the Ondaatje and Costa Prizes. He has written for the Guardian, The Times, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. His work is published in eighteen languages. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

@gavinfranc | gavinfrancis.com

ISBN: 9781786898203
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: November 12, 2024

Gavin Francis is a wonderful writer – thoughtful, engaging, immensely knowledgeable and supremely human For those who have missed travelling this year, and for anyone who has pondered the meaning of "isolation", there is an ideal present – a beautiful and highly illustrated book called Island Dreams, by Gavin Francis, exploring the place of islands in our psyche – from Lamu to the Lofoten Islands, the Faroes to the Falklands, Avalon to the Azores Highly absorbing . . . Francis combines memoir from a lifetime of travel and the practice of medicine, observations on the geography and history of islands across the globe, and reflections on how islands illuminate his own life and the human condition An intoxicating voyage during which maps become fictions and fictions verifiable facts. Myths of returning and older legends carry us out in a shared fugue of obsession and release. Here is a worthy companion to the dream labyrinths of Borges A thrilling book – beautiful and spare at once . . . A real achievement Combines brilliant observation with personal revelation, literary examination and even philosophical contemplation . . . Full of intriguing insights, wonderful description, well-researched detail and interspersed with a large number of historical and contemporary maps, which adds to the immersive reading experience . . . A wonderful, thoughtful and endlessly engaging piece of work Not just a paean but a meditation. Drawing on psychology, philosophy and literature, Francis examines the appeal of separation and remoteness, and recounts his own trips over the years, to the Antarctic, the Hebrides and beyond . . . Filled with a cartographer’s embarrassment of maps, while Francis elegantly and methodically asserts his case . . . He writes in brief, elliptical paragraphs, each as ornately designed as the diagrams that accompany them In his elegant, questing book, flavoured by wide learning and deep experience, Francis offers a fresh look at a perennial paradox: whether we live gregariously in a city or remotely on an island, a part of us is always wondering and fantasising about the other An uplifting and nourishing voyage through time, oceans and lands. It will reconnect you with the daring, dreaming side of yourself In this charming and beautifully illustrated book, Gavin Francis asks important questions about isolation and connection, and considers the ways in which islands have been imagined and experienced by travellers through the ages