Tristan da Cunha or One Half of the Earth

A tiny island in the middle of the ocean becomes the focus of longing for three men and a woman whose lives and love stories are irrevocably tied to the most out-of-the-way place on the globe.

No other place in the world is farther away from any human dwelling than this volcano in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in the triangle between Brazil, Antarctica and South Africa – an island whose name echoes that of a mythical lover: Tristan da Cunha. And yet this archipelago becomes "the centre of time" and "the centre of the world" for four people whose destinies meet here, across the centuries: Noomi Morholt, a South-African scientist on her way to a research station in the six-month darkness of the icy Antarctic winter; Edwin Heron Dodgson, priest and brother of Lewis Carroll, who, in the 19th century, sets out to convert the island?s handful of inhabitants to Christianity; Christian Reval, a cartographer who is the first to realize that the island is missing during World War II and later dies under undisclosed circumstances; and philatelist Mark Thompson who reconstructs the history of the discovery of Tristan da Cunha via his stamp collection...and in the process discovers himself.

In this great, multi-dimensional novel, Raoul Schrott links harsh landscapes to the captivating stories of four individuals who seek to find their loves, in the constellation of Tristan and Isolde. A timeless novel of unquenchable passions and obsessions, which simultaneously gives insight into five centuries of world history.