Gabriele Hoffmann Annas Atoll (Anna's Atoll) Europa Verlag, August 2002. 256 pp. ISBN 3-203-78046-1 This page-turner of a book recounts an astonishing adventure. Its heroine, Marie Elisabeth von Eck, called Lilli, is probably unknown to British readers. Prussian by birth, and determined, against the wishes of her brother (her parents having died), to get a proper education, she studied to become a teacher in the years immediately preceding the First World War, then accepted a job as a nanny in the household of the director of a British-Australian company exporting guano from a remote Pacific island. Alas, this island turned out to be no paradise. Two other countries - the United States and Mexico - also laid claims to it, and posted soldiers. There was little food: no fruit or vegetables, a solitary coconut tree, difficult fishing because of sharks and lack of tools, and an abundance of dodos and seagulls, all inedible. But even worse were the women. Lilli had experienced in her previous career the ill-will of her charges' mothers, jealous alike of her influence over their child and her superior education. Carlotta, the Mexican wife of her employer Gustav Schmitz, had this pernicious streak in spades. Four times she tried to kill Lilli, and finally prevented her from getting a place on the relief ship which called to collect the stranded crew of the Norwegian vessel that had brought Lilli to the island, their ship having split itself open on the atoll immediately after landing her. Her adventure climaxes (almost literally) with the murderous behaviour of the island's lighthouse keeper, now the only man left on the atoll, who shoots one of the women and rapes the rest until they in turn kill him. By now the war has broken out in Europe with the result that, when a further ship arrives, Lilli finds herself accused of (a) murder, and (b) spying for Germany. But again she is rescued from her subsequent imprisonment, this time by her friends (and future husband) who came up with a plan, which can only be called an adventure in itself. This amazing tale, couched as a fictional report and letters by Lilli but firmly based on fact, speaks for itself. Read, translate and enjoy!