Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands : Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will

Part compendium of maps, part poetry/short story/micro fiction project, Schalansky's Pocket Atlas is a gorgeous book, and a delight to digest. 

Each island is afforded a map, beautifully rendered and detailed, and a short tale from its history, written in an immediately engaging tone. The stories tell us of the animal inhabitants of mysterious islands, of shipwrecks and explorers and mutinies. 

Schalansky tells us in her introduction that all the stories in her Atlas are true, but that she has 'transformed the texts and appropriated them as sailors appropriate the lands they discover'.