Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

An exploration of isolation and connectedness based on thirty years of travel, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Adventures in Human Being and Empire Antarctica

SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR

In Island Dreams, Gavin Francis combines stories of his own travels with psychology, philosophy and myth, shedding new light on the importance of islands and isolation in our collective consciousness.

Francis draws on thirty years of island adventures from the Faroe Islands to the Aegean, from the Galapagos to the Andaman Islands. He contrasts these quests for freedom with the demands for commitment required as a doctor, community member and parent. Island Dreams riffs on the twin poles of rest and motion, independence and attachment, never more relevant than in today’s ever-connected world.

Gavin Francis is an award-winning writer and GP. He is the
author of eight books of non-fiction, including Adventures in Human Being,
which was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction
Book of the Year Award, and Empire Antarctica, which won Scottish Book of the
Year in the SMIT Awards and was shortlisted for both the Ondaatje and Costa
Prizes. He has written for the Guardian, The Times, the New York Review of
Books and the London Review of Books. His work is published in eighteen
languages. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

@gavinfranc gavinfrancis.com