Islands are special places in Mediterranean culture – they are the islands of the blessed, of the exiles, treasure islands, islands of the dead. It took Odysseus twenty years to return to his island. From the ancient times islands were usually the setting for a life that is more ideal than the life of reality. Plato located his ideal state in mythical, sunken Atlantis, and the Utopia of Sir Thomas More is also envisaged as an island. 

Utopias, in the reformist and social connotations they possessed thirty years ago, have lost their meaning in the postindustrial society of “lost illusions”. Quite to the contrary, the present-day escapist utopias are intended for the privileged. Again, they are connected to islands that may provide a certain kind of exclusivity.