By Helen Gregg

The German Book Office’s October Book of the Month is Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky. Want to win a FREE copy? Send your name and mailing address to gregg (at) newyork (dot) gbo (dot) org. Every tenth entry will win a free copy, until our supply runs out.

From the press release:

There are still places on this earth that are unknown. Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky captures fifty remote islands that are far away in every sense — far from the mainland, from people, from airports and from holiday brochures.

Using historic events and scientific reports as a springboard, Atlas of Remote Islands creates a story around each island: fantastical, inscrutable stories, imagined realities for surviving on a few square meters of land. Rare animals and strange people abound: from marooned slaves to lonely scientists, lost explorers to confused lighthouse keepers, mutinous sailors to forgotten castaways, upstanding convicts to officials exiled in punishment.

Gorgeously illustrated and with color maps throughout, the atlas shows all fifty islands on the same scale, in order of the oceans they are in. Judith Schalansky lures us onto fifty remote islands — from Tristan da Cunha to Clipperton Atoll, from Christmas Island to Easter Island — and proves that the most adventurous journeys still take place in the mind, with one finger pointing at a map