A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World

A beautifully illustrated selection of stories about the lighthouses and their guardians found in some of the most remote places on earth.

A Financial Times Travel Book of the Year 2023
'Illuminating' - The Observer

There is something beautiful and wild in the impossible architecture of lighthouses. They have been the homes and workplaces of men and women whose romantic guardianship has saved countless lives from cruel seas. Yet while that way of life fades away, as the lights go out and the buildings crumble, we still have their stories.

From a blind lighthouse keeper tending a light in the Arctic Circle, to an intrepid young girl saving ships from wreck at the foot of her father's lighthouse, and the plight of the lighthouse crew cut off from society for forty days, this is a glorious book full of illuminating stories that will transport the reader to the world's most isolated and inspiring lighthouses.

With over thirty tales that explore the depths to which we can sink and the heights to which we can soar as human beings, and accompanied by beautiful illustrations, nautical charts, maps, architectural plans and curious facts, A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World is as full of wonder as the far flung lighthouses themselves.

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

Auteur

José Luis González Macías is a Spanish writer, graphic designer and publisher. In 2003 he published several short stories and poems which received the Letras Jóvenes award. Soon after he became interested in graphic design and, since then, has worked for museums and cultural institutions designing books and other graphic material. Along with Lia Peinador, he runs Ediciones Menguantes, a small publishing house based in León in northern Spain. A fan of maps since he was a child, in A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World he has combined his passion for words and images in more than thirty stories about remote lighthouses.