A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World

González Macías

19 October 2023
9781529087147
160 pages

Synopsis

A beautifully illustrated selection of stories about the lighthouses and their guardians found in some of the most remote places on earth.

A Financial Times Travel Book of the Year 2023
'Illuminating' - The Observer

There is something beautiful and wild in the impossible architecture of lighthouses. They have been the homes and workplaces of men and women whose romantic guardianship has saved countless lives from cruel seas. Yet while that way of life fades away, as the lights go out and the buildings crumble, we still have their stories.

From a blind lighthouse keeper tending a light in the Arctic Circle, to an intrepid young girl saving ships from wreck at the foot of her father's lighthouse, and the plight of the lighthouse crew cut off from society for forty days, this is a glorious book full of illuminating stories that will transport the reader to the world's most isolated and inspiring lighthouses.

With over thirty tales that explore the depths to which we can sink and the heights to which we can soar as human beings, and accompanied by beautiful illustrations, nautical charts, maps, architectural plans and curious facts, A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World is as full of wonder as the far flung lighthouses themselves.

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

One of those books that seems made for gifting, it is a beautifully illustrated guide to some of the globe’s remotest spots with stories and vignettes from lighthouses that are, in themselves, miracles of construction and perseverance and monuments to the fundamental goodness of human beings.