{"product_id":"9781466872998","title":"The Lost Island: Alone Among the Fruitful and Multiplying","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA striking narrative of a man's inadvertent discovery of the life force that persists in the most secluded of places--and isolated of beings\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter the death of his father, Alfred Van Cleef--the last of a family of Dutch Jews--learns that he is unable to have children. Seeking the remotest spot on the planet, far from the gleefully reproducing couples of Amsterdam, Van Cleef picks a forbidding island in the Indian Ocean, a bizarrely bureaucratic French weather station, two thousand miles from the nearest continent. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFinally entrenched on this lonely, wind-battered rock--following an eight-year odyssey to obtain a visiting permit and three weeks' rough passage--Van Cleef anticipates a total escape from the sexual frenzy of humanity: the island, ironically named Amsterdam, is inhabited solely by a group of thirty-six men. Yet this stark environment turns out to house a riotously mating society of albatrosses, sea elephants, fur seals--and especially bdelloid rotifers, an all-female species able to reproduce without males. It is in this unlikely setting that Van Cleef is forced to reckon with his most profound existential concerns.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith wry humor and probing insight, Van Cleef weaves geography, natural history, and biology into \u003ci\u003eThe Lost Island\u003c\/i\u003e, an original narrative of a lost island and a man, finally found.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Holt, Henry \u0026 Company, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47129948684528,"sku":"9781466872998","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781466872998_p0.jpg?v=1769892047","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781466872998","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}