Voyage to Desolation Island

Proof Copy. 8vo. 206pp. Illustrated wraps. Map, Notes, Bibliography.

Translated from the French by Patricia Clancy. Published in the US as The Arch of Kerguelen. Originally published by Flammarion in 1992 as L'Arche des Kerguelen: voyages aux îles de la désolation. Winner of the 1993 Prix Jean Freustié and the 2003 Dinny O'Hearn / SBS Prize for Literary Translation.

Author follows in the footsteps of the 18th-century sailor Yves-Joseph Kerguelen, who bequeathed his name to the archipelago he discovered in the Southern Indian Ocean. Situated some three thousand miles off the Australian coast, and existing 'outside of time' the 'Desolation' Kerguelen Islands became the source of many of the Enlightenment's poems and paintings depicting great solitude, isolation, and mystery. Kauffmann's three-year captivity as a hostage in Lebanon (1985–88) while on assignment for L'Événement du jeudi is recounted in his 2007 memoir La Maison du retour. "Kauffmann... discovers the loneliness at the centre of the human heart." –St. Petersburg Times