The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness
‘This is a book about searching in the best sense – full of ideas, beauty, doubt and adventures’ ELIZABETH KOLBERT
‘Fascinating and masterfully written’ ALICE WINN
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 book that takes you into the wild and ignites the imagination. Compelling and thought provoking, Flyn’s journey into the heart of the matter challenges us to rethink the relationship between human culture and nature’ SUE STUART SMITH
‘The Savage Landscape enthralled me—leading me spellbound through our encounters with and imaginings of wilderness and its many faces. In Flyn’s hands, a deeply researched history is given vibrant, propulsive life’ JESSICA J LEE
‘Flyn’s stamina is matched by acute sensitivity. She has the travel writer’s gift for living an experience and simultaneously pinning it to the page. Her research is phenomenal, and she writes compellingly of the history of the places she visits’ -
Spectator -
'A profound and extraordinary book. Rich in detail, this book is a superb blend of geography, natural history, myth and religion, environmental science and cultural studies … The Savage Landscape is as vivid as the mesopelagic waters Cal Flyn so evocatively describes, as diverse as the flora and fauna of New Guinea … This book is one of the best books I have read in years’ -
Annie Worsley, author of Windswept -
‘Cal Flyn examines our relationship with the wild places of the earth–and the meaning of wilderness itself–with an unflinching eye. The Savage Landscape is a beguiling book: by turns lyrical, learned, and provocative’ -
Ed Caesar, author of The Moth and the Mountain -
'Cal Flyn goes looking for answers to a troublesome question: What is wilderness? The Savage Landscape is a book about searching in the best sense – full of ideas, beauty, doubt and adventures' -
Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction -
‘Profound, exhilarating, and suffused with nuanced wit and insight. The Savage Landscape is essential and deeply rewarding reading for all who seek to understand the wild in our psyches and in the world… A must-read: put this book on the top of your list’ -
David George Haskell, author ofHow Flowers Made our World -
'Fascinating and masterfully written, Cal Flyn’s The Savage Landscape is an exploration of wildness in both nature and humankind. Brilliant!' -
Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam -
'A truly epic exploration of the world which we all inhabit. A book like this, so deftly written, has the power to remake our relationship with the natural world.' -
Rebecca Smith, author of Rural -