Voyage To Desolation Island

Jean-Paul Kauffmann

Editions

Review

Not the least intriguing thing about this book is its author, who was a hostage in Beirut for 3 years in the late 1980s.  First published in France in 1993, in fact it precedes The Dark Room at Longwood, Kauffmann’s remarkable book about Napoleon’s captivity on St Helena ,which was the first to be published in English.  There is something intensely fascinating about a man who has borne so much enforced solitude then going in search of it.

The islands of the title were first discovered by the French sailor Kerguelen in the eighteenth century, after whom they are nowadays named.  To whalers and mariners they were long known as the Desolation Islands, partly from their sheer remoteness – they are tiny specks on the Antarctic edge of the Indian Ocean between South Africa and Australia – and partly from their aspect.  There are no trees, which means that the wind blows unchecked and scarcely anything grows.  The people associated with it are not quite like others, but whether it is the place which shapes them or vice-versa is hard to say.  By making this strange place vivid, Kauffmann reflects on solitude and obsession in a way that is all the more illuminating for being indirect. - review by Johnny de Falbe