Judith Schalansky – författare

Eftersom hon föddes på fel sida om Berlinmuren var det bara genom fantasin som Judith Schalansky kunde resa. Med denna bok har hon skapat sin egen atlas, och tar oss med till 50 avlägsna platser från Tristan da Cunha till Clipperton Atoll, från Christmas Island till Påskön. Sällsynta djur och udda mäniskor fyller sidorna: strandsatta slavar och ensamma naturforskare, vilsna upptäcksresanden och frustrerade fyrvaktare, myterister och skeppsbrutna. Fåtöljresenären som följer med på dessa resor kommer strax uppleva dessa platser som visserligen finns i verkligheten, men som kommer till liv genom fantasin. Judith Schalansky föddes 1980 i Östtyskland, nära Österjökusten. Hon studerade konsthistoria vid Freie Universität i Berlin och grafisk design vid Fachhochschule Potsdam. Hennes typografiska handbok om den tyska frakturstilen, Fraktur mon amour, gavs ut 2006 och vann ett flertal priser. Hennes första roman, som handlade om marinuniformen, Blau steht dir nicht (Blått är inte din färg), publicerades 2008. En underbar bok som kombinerar poetiska berättelser med vackra kartor.Time Ett fullständigt utsökt objekt: en Wunderkammer och ett bestiarum.The Guardian Charming, kuslig och lysande! New Yorker Storslagen bokkonst!Der kulturspiegel Att öppna denna fullständigt fängslande bok är som att förvandlas till Robinson Kruse, åtminstone för en stund.Die Zeit

Each disparate object described in this book—a Caspar David Friedrich painting, a species of tiger, a villa in Rome, a Greek love poem, an island in the Pacific—shares a common fate: it no longer exists, except as the dead end of a paper trail. Recalling the works of W. G. Sebald, Bruce Chatwin, or Rebecca Solnit, An Inventory of Losses is a beautiful evocation of twelve specific treasures that have been lost to the world forever, and, taken as a whole, opens mesmerizing new vistas of how we can think about extinction and loss.With meticulous research and a vivid awareness of why we should care about these losses, Judith Schalansky, the acclaimed author of Atlas of Remote Islands, lets these objects speak for themselves: she ventriloquizes the tone of other sources, burrows into the language of contemporaneous accounts, and deeply interrogates the very notion of memory.

Each disparate object described in this book—a Caspar David Friedrich painting, a species of tiger, a villa in Rome, a Greek love poem, an island in the Pacific—shares a common fate: it no longer exists, except as the dead end of a paper trail. Recalling the works of W. G. Sebald, Bruce Chatwin, or Rebecca Solnit, An Inventory of Losses is a beautiful evocation of twelve specific treasures that have been lost to the world forever, and, taken as a whole, opens mesmerizing new vistas of how we can think about extinction and loss.With meticulous research and a vivid awareness of why we should care about these losses, Judith Schalansky, the acclaimed author of Atlas of Remote Islands, lets these objects speak for themselves: she ventriloquizes the tone of other sources, burrows into the language of contemporaneous accounts, and deeply interrogates the very notion of memory.

Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015Adaption is everything, something Frau Lohmark is well aware of as the biology teacher at the Charles Darwin High School in a country backwater of the former East Germany. A strict devotee of Darwin’s evolution principle, Lohmark views education as survival of the fittest: classifying her pupils as biological specimens and scorning her colleagues for indulging in ‘favourites’. However, as people move West in search of work and opportunities, the school’s future is in jeopardy and the Lohmark is forced to face her most fundamental lesson: she must adapt or she cannot survive.

Born on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall, as a child Judith Schalansky could travel only through the pages of an atlas. Now she has created her own, taking us across the oceans of the world to fifty remote islands. Perfect maps jostle with cryptic tales from the islands, full of rare animals and lost explorers, marooned slaves and lonely scientists, mutinous sailors and forgotten castaways.