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

By Sergio Ghione

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!

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312310951
• ISBN13: 9780312310950
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 0.7" x 5.6"

Customer Reviews

A looking glass view on a remote and largly unknown place.

"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.