Review: What is that illustrious island feeling that not everyone can appreciate?

In England you don’t often think about the fact that you are on an island. On Terschelling yes. It also lies in the difference between ‘in’ and ‘on’. You get the island feeling from smaller islands in particular. But what is that island feeling that you can become addicted to? Everything: the private environment in which you feel safe, far away from the big world that begins on shore. You know what space you have to make do with, and the challenges that come with it. You hardly have to think about distances and you are more autonomous, even if that cannot be fully explained. And then there is a pleasant dose of romance, fueled by fantastic stories and films set on islands.

There are people who don’t like that island feeling. They say it’s a big problem that you can’t get off immediately when you want to. That it is a narrow-minded world, comparable to a small village where everyone knows each other.

Everything that an island can evoke is discussed by Adwin de Kluyver in his adventurous book The islands of good and evil. With the subtitle: A voyage of discovery. Yes that is it. A what for one.

Read on eagerly

Stories about islands, sometimes their history, alternate with chapters in which a few are treated more or less encyclopedically. Never boring, always attractive, you always want to know more about it. That is also why it is a very durable book.

In his stories about islands, the long passages, De Kluyver immediately grabs his readers: ‘Until recently, Gruinard was a forbidden island. Now it is accessible to everyone again. Not that anyone is coming. Only a lost sea kayaker or a fisherman looking for a lost buoy sometimes sets foot there.’

What is going on here? Read on eagerly. Applies to everything in this book: the explorers, the idealists who dream of a new society, the millionaires who are looking for their own little world, convicts, scientists who want to experiment in secret, and of course also original residents: everyone gets a place , a voice and a meaning. Everything is wonderful, everything is exciting.