The Dinny O'Hearn/SBS Prize for Literary Translation: Winner 2003

Judges report

Voyage to Desolation Island by Jean-Paul Kauffmann. Translated by Patricia Clancy (Harvill/Random House)

'The wild barren land called Desolation…' Voyage to Desolation Island is a beautifully written narrative of a journey the author made to the Kerguelen Islands 'inhabited by fascinating animals and…green as the meadow'.

This odyssey is a crucible of humanity's spirituality, knowledge, hopes, aspirations and ambitions, pitched against timelessness and unconquerable space.

Jean-Paul Kauffmann, the narrator, calls this land '…the most isolated spot on earth…and one of the last curiosities for a generation that flatters itself it has abolished time and space…an Eden razed to the ground and thrown in the sea [where] creation stopped at the fifth day, with the birds and the fishes…'

The story is not just a history of the efforts to conquer the land over the centuries, but also a quest to find a Utopia, to shelter from war and to seek answers in science. This is a masterful book, a combination of history, travelogue, philosophy and spiritual journey: finally, it is man's ultimate confrontation with himself.