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

Ghione, Sergio

3.76

33 ratings by Goodreads

9780312310950: Turtle Island: A Journey to the World's Most Remote Island

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312310951 ISBN 13: 9780312310950

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003

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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!

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About the Author:

Sergio Ghione is a doctor and research scientist at Italy's National Research Foundation at Pisa who has a passion for islands (and turtles).

Martin McLaughlin is a prize-winning translator and Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford.

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.

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