From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Islands of Abandonment, comes a new book about our relationship to the natural world.

This book takes us into the wild – deep into dark forests, to the top of mountains and into the heart of deserts. It addresses our deep yearnings to be awed and inspired by landscapes that remain beyond our reach and examines what nature gets up to in the absence of humans.

In 10 chapters, each loosely structured around a visit to some of the world’s wildest and most invigorating landscapes, the book asks provocative questions about the nature of wilderness and how wild places might best be appreciated or preserved.

These locations have been chosen for their physical beauty, their perceived isolation, and the moral or emotional complexity of the human stories that can be found there. In this search for wilderness, we will meet ascetics in search of theophany in the desert; lonely shepherds seeing off wolves under the stars; missionaries preaching from shacks deep in the jungle; wise lamas meditating under lofty mountain peaks.

‘A thrilling, tender, acute tour through the wildernesses of the world outside us and the far wilder worlds inside. Why does the desolate allure? It’s an urgently important, complex question. We need to know for the sake of our souls, our politics and our planet. Flyn is the perfect guide.’

Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast and The Edges of the World

‘Cal Flyn is one of the most exciting writers around – for the poetry and precision of her prose, for the vast scope of her learning, for her fearless (and self-questioning) spirit. In The Savage Landscape, she opens one door after another, to wonder, to terror, to rich and mixed feelings, so that we can see the world anew and in all its deepest dimensions. This book is at once thrilling adventure and bracing meditation.’

Pico Iyer, author of The Half Known Life

PRAISE FOR ISLANDS OF ABANDONMENT

THE SUNDAY TIMES’ BESTSELLER AND SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR

WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT CONSERVATION AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE

‘A haunting look at how nature fights back … Beautiful, evocative’ Sunday Times

‘Exhilarating … A story of the extraordinary resilience of life in some of the most desolate, ravaged and polluted landscapes on earth’ Daily Telegraph

‘Fascinating and brain-energising. It is full of detail and colour that sends one googling, to look up pictures and find out more. It is also an optimistic book … I’ll cling to that bit of unfashionable hope’ The Times

‘Brilliant … Flyn paints vivid pictures … both clear and compelling’ Daily Telegraph, five stars

‘Filled with understanding and adventure … Written with a beautiful attention to detail and a generous and imaginative frame of mind. The wonderful and surprising thing is how much reassurance and sense of possibility comes out of it at every turn’ Adam Nicolson

‘Certainly a book of the year for me’ Sebastian Faulks

Cal Flyn is an award-winning writer from the Highlands of Scotland. She writes creative nonfiction, literary criticism, and long-form journalism.

Her first book, Thicker Than Water, about frontier violence in colonial Australia, was a Times book of the year. Her second book, Islands of Abandonment — about the ecology and psychology of abandoned places — has been shortlisted for numerous literary awards including the Wainwright Prize, the British Academy Book Prize, the Ondaatje Prize, and the Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction.

Cal’s journalistic writing has been published in Granta, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times, The Economist, and others. Cal was previously writer-in-residence at Gladstone’s Library and at the Jan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland. She was made a MacDowell fellow in 2019, and in 2022 was announced the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.