Wild :An Elemental Journey
Wild :An Elemental Journey
paperback
Published:
1 May, 2008
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Description
WINNER OF THE ORION BOOK AWARD
Part travelogue, part manifesto for wildness as an essential character of life, Wild is a one-of-a-kind book from a one-of-a-kind author
'Undefinable, untameable, profound and extraordinary' Observer
'A masterpiece' Maria Popova
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'I took seven years over this work, spent all I had, my time, money and energy. Part of the journey was a green riot and part a deathly bleakness. I got ill, I got well. I went to the freedom fighters of West Papua and sang my head off in their highlands. I met cannibals infinitely kinder and more trustworthy than the murderous missionaries who evangelize them. I found a paradox of wildness in the glinting softness of its charisma, for what is savage is in the deepest sense gentle and what is wild is kind. In the end - a strangely sweet result - I came back to a wild home.'
Wild describes an extraordinary odyssey, courageous and sometimes dangerous. It is by turns funny, touching and harrowing, and offers a poetic consideration of the tender connection between human society and wildlands.
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'Easily the best travel book that I have read in the last ten years' Guardian
'Wild is like nothing else I've ever read: thrilling, troubling, frightening, exhilarating. This is a truly necessary book, and we are all lucky that the subject found a writer worthy of it' Philip Pullman
'Passionate, rigorous and utterly honest, Griffiths's remarkable book is written in a style as wild and exciting as its subject' Robert Macfarlane
Prizes
Short-listed for Orwell Prize.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780141006444 |
| ISBN10 | 0141006447 |
| Number Of Pages | 480 |
| Item Weight | 334 g |
| Product Dimensions | 128 x 197 x 29 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format | paperback |
Media Reviews
Wild is like nothing else I've ever read: thrilling, troubling, frightening, exhilarating. Jay Griffiths' courage and energy are formidable, but so is her sheer intelligence and literary flair -- Phillip Pullman
Reality is such that both language and imagination have to exaggerate in order to confront it truly. Living with such exaggeration you need a very good head for heights and a lot of bravery. In this book Jay Griffiths has both. If bravery itself could write (by definition it can't), it would write, I believe, like she does -- John Berger
A vivifying read in its entirety . . . both an act of revolt (against the erasure of the wild, against the domestication of the soul) and an act of reverence (for the irrepressible in nature, for landscape as a form of knowledge, for life on Earth, as improbable and staggering as love.) . . . Reclaiming our wildness emerges as an act of courage and resistance amid the conspicuous consumption by which late-stage capitalism drugs us into mistaking having for being . . . What Griffiths offers is a wakeup call from this near-living, a spell against apathy, against our self-expatriation from our own nature -- Maria Popova * The Marginalian *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Jay Griffiths is the author of many books, such as Wild: An Elemental Journey, Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape, Tristimania and Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time. She won the Discover award for the best first-time author in the USA; the inaugural Orion award and the Hay Festival International Fellowship. She has been commissioned to write for Radiohead and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her work has received widespread accolades, including from Gary Snyder, Barry Lopez, Don Paterson, John Berger, Philip Pullman, KT Tunstall and Nikolai Fraiture.