Abstract
As Godfrey Baldacchino reminds us, an island is a ‘geographically finite, total, discrete, sharply precise physical entity which accentuates clear and holistic notions of location and identity’. 1 A recurrent theme in contemporary Island Studies scholarship is to argue that such apparent bounded simplicity lends the figure of the island to all sorts of reductive characterisations. In the works of Homer, Shakespeare, Defoe, Donne, Swift, More, Orwell, Huxley, Deleuze and many others, islands are frequently condensed to tropes of utopia and dystopia, heaven and hell, known and unknown, past and future, and island laboratory. Thus, if a much repeated line in islands scholarship is that Western culture ‘not only thinks about islands, but thinks with islands’, 2 then another repeated theme is how to work through this intertwining of island metaphors, imaginations and realities.
One way to engage the perennial question of ‘what is an island’? – as Stephen Royle does in this exemplary book – is to explore how islands are understood through different academic disciplines, media and the arts. As the first ever appointed ‘Professor of Island Geography’, Royle is armed with decades of field notes. Across the different chapters he deftly examines how islands are: defined (chapter 1); characterised (chapter 2); understood in mythology, religion and customary practices (chapter 3); reduced to laboratories (chapter 4); and understood in literature (chapter 5), visual arts, film, television, radio (chapter 6), and popular culture and tourism (chapter 7). The book does not stand out for these themes alone – as they are familiar among islands scholarship – but it is notable for the accessible and readable manner in which these themes are presented. Islands forms part of Reaktion Books’ Earth series, and it was commissioned to trace ‘the historical significance and cultural history of natural phenomenon’. Other books in the series include Desert, Waterfall, Earthquake, Fire, Flood, Moon, Tsunami, Volcano and Air.
Fulfilling its remit, Royle’s book has a pace and conveys an excitement about islands that allows him to rapidly move through a range of contemporary debates in islands scholarship, such as whether an island is still an island if it is linked to the mainland and about how islands have been reduced to laboratories in science, military activities, linguistics and anthropology. As a Caribbean island scholar, I was particularly drawn to chapter 6 on the visual arts – and, indeed, the book as a whole is notable for the large number of illustrations (there seems to be one on every second page!). Here, Royle, like Derek Walcott, devotes space to reflecting on the nature of light and the associated atmospheres of islands, providing a particularly fascinating discussion of Gauguin. Personally, I would have liked to see more included on archipelagos, 3 but despite this I found Islands to be an extremely enjoyable and fruitful read. The book is relevant for lay people, students and scholars alike, and Royle’s vivid writing style and illuminating examples remind us why islands hold such a recurrent appeal for geographers and those from related disciplines.