Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

In Island Dreams, Gavin Francis examines our collective fascination with islands. He blends stories of his own travels with psychological, philosophy and great voyages from literature, shedding new light on the importance of islands and isolation in our collective consciousness.

'I was in search of distant islands, in love with the idea that, on a patch of land, protected by a circumference of the sea, the obligations and irritations of life would dissolve and a singular clarity of mind would descend.'

Comparing the life of freedom of thirty years of extraordinary travel from the Faroe Islands to the Aegean, from the Galapagos to the Andaman Islands with a life of responsibility as a doctor, community member and parent approaching middle age, Island Dreams riffs on the twinned poles of rest and motion, independence and attachment, nevermore relevant than n today's perennially connected world.

Illustrated with maps throughout, this is a celebration of human adventures in the world and within our minds.