ITA:
L’isola delle tartarughe: Viaggio ad Ascensione
i Robinson/Letture Editori Laterza 2000
Economica Laterza, 2002
ENG:
Turtle Island. A Journey to Britain’s Oddest Colony
Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, UK, 2002
Turtle Island. A Journey to the World’s Most Remote Island
Thomas Dunne Books, US, 2003
DEU
die Insel der Schildkröten. Ein ungelöstes Rätsel im Atlantik
Campus Verlag, 2002
ESP
La isla de las tortugas. Viaje a Ascensión Ediciones Peninsula, 2002
presentation
A scientific expedition has turned into a fascinating travel diary. An unusual book tells us about it, to be discovered page after page. Sergio Ghione (Venice, 1949) is a doctor and researcher at the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the National Research Council of Pisa. He has a passion for geography and in particular for the islands. Together with three ethologists and marine biologists he left one day in April 1997 for Ascension, the island of turtles.
reviews
Ghione is not only an amateur collaborator of researchers. He is also a keen observer who looks around and captures the most spectacular aspects of the island’s wilderness. He has the makings of a storyteller. He conveys his emotion when a sense of dismay seizes him at the idea of the infinite distance that separates him from his world. The narrative is alive and driving…” (Isabella Lattes Coiffmann, La Stampa)
“Is it better to take a trip as a hobby or for work? Personally I am convinced that the experience that most satisfies is that of those who are free to participate as a hobby in what others do for work. A tangible demonstration of this thesis is the ‘Turtle Island’ by Sergio Ghione, a doctor who works at the National Research Council in Pisa, who loves travel and exploration, loves geography and the shape and history of things, appreciates the details and dwells on the details”. (Elisabetta Visalberghi, L’Indice dei Libri del Mese )
“Sergio Ghione’s Turtle Island is to be welcomed as the first general monograph on Ascension Island since Duff Hart-Davie’s Ascension: The Story of a South Atlantic Island (1973) … Overall, Ghione’s book provides an entertaining and informative introduction to Ascension Island and will be of interest to both newcomers as well as to those inclined to reminisce about their own time on the island” (A.H: Schulenburg, Wirebird: the Journal of the Friends of St Helena
“In the imagination of the child each island is by definition the place of the spell. The island that Sergio Ghione describes in this book alternating with lively lightness pages of personal experience, geo-naturalistic information and historical news is very close to this fantastic idea that we have been cultivating since childhood …”. (Maristella Bellosta Besana, Naturalmente)
“In his beautiful book Sergio Ghione tells of a scientific expedition carried out to study the migration of turtles but born to settle an old debt with his father and the world of childhood, when “the mysterious island” was the center of imagination …”. (Stefano Salis, il Sole 24ore)
“In a laconic and conversational style [Ghione] seamlessly weaves the historical with the geographical, and his descriptions are often pleasingly tangential, melding descriptions of the island’s past and present inhabitants with observations on its ecological make-up (the green sand, the world’s worst golf course)…” (The Times Higher Education Supplement, UK)
“Ripe for the island. A very wondrous book. It is actually about a zoological phenomenon, even a riddle. And then it suddenly turns into a psychological reflection on people and history. … The original reason for travelling seems to fade into the background when writing about the island, the loneliness, the people, the life. And is then suddenly there again. Precise, scientific. …” (nrz am Sonntag)