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Island at the Edge of the World
- Author
- Mike Pitts
- Narrator
- Mike Pitts
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 11 September 2025
- Run Time
- 12 hours 20 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
'The true and fascinating story of Easter Island and its amazing statues' KEN FOLLETT
Where did they come from? How did they get there? Why did they carve the island’s colossal iconic statues – and how? What happened to the civilisation they created?
These are just a few of the questions about Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, that have puzzled generations.
Europeans first encountered the Islanders in the early eighteenth century, bringing back astonishing tales from one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth. They told fantastic stories of lost continents, cannibalism, giants and aliens. Thor Heyerdahl claimed that the island was discovered by pale-skinned sailors from South America, ignoring the rightful claims of the greatest explorers the world has ever known. Recently, the idea that Islanders cut down all the trees, causing mass starvation and social collapse, has been espoused by scientists, broadcasters and politicians. Now, in archaeologist Mike Pitts’s superb investigation, Island at the Edge of the World, he provides authoritative new insights into what really happened.
Using the latest scientific and archaeological research, plus a huge range of historical accounts, Pitts builds a fascinating new portrait of the Islanders’ story. In particular, Pitts revives the life work of Katherine Routledge, who spent sixteen months on the island in 1914-15, surviving revolution and war, assembling a priceless but largely ignored archive of excavations and interviews - and whose legacy reveals the rapacious interference that spawned generations of false histories. Many questions still remain, but this is the most compelling and comprehensive account yet published of the extraordinary story of Easter Island.
Critics Review
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Mike Pitts has written the true and fascinating story of Easter Island and its amazing statues
Ken Follett
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A thought-provoking mix of published past and current work, and rediscovered documents that together provides a usefully different perspective on Rapa Nui's iconic world heritage archaeology
Professor Sue Hamilton
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Rapa Nui has a double history of early Polynesian life and later colonial devastation, both mythologised. Mike Pitts draws on deep research to provide a powerful corrective to such myths. Anyone looking for an intelligent, balanced and accessible account of Rapa Nui should read his book
Chris Gosden, author of THE HISTORY OF MAGIC
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In this detailed, intelligent, humane work, Pitts has given us a salutary corrective to centuries of Western prejudice and fantasy
Literary Review
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A gripping story which, in a small way, redeems the horror of the Victorian brutality ... [Pitts] is good at bringing alive human stories
Spectator
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A crisp, confident and convincing new account of the place and its chroniclers...Pitts's account reflects a broader shift in the consensus, one that many readers will find persuasive, as this one did
New Yorker
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A bold and convincing revision of Rapa Nui's history ... A welcome contribution to Pacific Island history that holds relevance not just for Rapa Nui, but for other islands across this vast ocean
Kirkus
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Revelatory ... He offers a far more pragmatic but still fascinating explanation [of Easter Island’s history] … What Pitts describes is wholly convincing
Mail on Sunday
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This striking account… [is] a stunning unravelling of many layers of hidden history
Publishers Weekly
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There is much in The Island at the Edge of the World to inspire, ponder, and sadden … it’s a big story that says much about all of us — about art and humanity and our hunger to make meaning and to speak it across the centuries
Washington Post
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A thoughtful and often quietly corrective work that replaces dramatic speculation with patient archaeological reasoning ... Leaves no stone unturned in dismantling the sensational mysteries and shows where the genuine questions still lie
Asian Review of Books
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Compelling ... Pitts has gone deeper than any other writer in cutting through the miasma of misperceptions that shrouds the island ... [A] magisterial history
New York Times
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Pitts is great on the Routledges, and his discussion of the main Easter Island topics – the conundrums of the statues, the script, the sweet potato, the many theories the island has inspired – surveys the territory admirably. He presents a convincing case against the theory of the islanders’ self destructive “ecocide"
Times Literary Supplement
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A ground-breaking, eye-opening work of history and adventure that challenges the prevailing story of Easter Island among tourists and scholars
Esquire, Best Books of 2026 (So Far)
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One of archaeology’s most fascinating enigmas, explored with depth and subtlety by the British archaeologist Mike Pitts in his compelling book Island at the Edge of the World… the book meticulously lays bare the often overlooked violence unleashed by outsiders: a slow devastation wrought through enslavement, killings, introduced diseases, missionary incursions, and extractive regimes
India Forum
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This leisurely and richly detailed book would be great fit for lovers of adventure and history writing, as in The Wide Wide Sea (2024) by Hampton Sides, of Library of Lost Maps (2025), by James Cheshire, and for fans of David Grann looking for a more scholarly read
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Details
- Author
- Mike Pitts
- Narrator
- Mike Pitts
- Duration
- 12 hours 20 minutes
- Release Date
- 11 September 2025
- ISBN
- 9781526667298
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- History and Archaeology
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Island at the Edge of the World, written and read by Mike Pitts.'The true and fascinating story of Easter Island and its amazing statues' KEN FOLLETTWhere did they come from? How did they get there? Why did they carve the island’s colossal iconic statues – and how? What happened to the civilisation they created?These are just a few of the questions about Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, that have puzzled generations.Europeans first encountered the Islanders in the early eighteenth century, bringing back astonishing tales from one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth. They told fantastic stories of lost continents, cannibalism, giants and aliens. Thor Heyerdahl claimed that the island was discovered by pale-skinned sailors from South America, ignoring the rightful claims of the greatest explorers the world has ever known. Recently, the idea that Islanders cut down all the trees, causing mass starvation and social collapse, has been espoused by scientists, broadcasters and politicians. Now, in archaeologist Mike Pitts’s superb investigation, Island at the Edge of the World, he provides authoritative new insights into what really happened.Using the latest scientific and archaeological research, plus a huge range of historical accounts, Pitts builds a fascinating new portrait of the Islanders’ story. In particular, Pitts revives the life work of Katherine Routledge, who spent sixteen months on the island in 1914-15, surviving revolution and war, assembling a priceless but largely ignored archive of excavations and interviews - and whose legacy reveals the rapacious interference that spawned generations of false histories. Many questions still remain, but this is the most compelling and comprehensive account yet published of the extraordinary story of Easter Island.
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