Overview

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 SHORTLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE This is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place. In Chernobyl, following the nuclear disaster, only a handful of people returned to their dangerously irradiated homes. On an uninhabited Scottish island, feral cattle live entirely wild. In Detroit, once America’s fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods. This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world – and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery. By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone? More praise for Islands of Abandonment ‘Extraordinary … Just when you thought there was nowhere left to explore, along comes an author with a new category of terrain … Dazzling’ SPECTATOR ‘A haunting look at how nature fights back … Beautiful, evocative’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Flyn’s brave, thorough book sets out to explore places where angels fear to tread … The result is fascinating, eerie and strange … There is some thrilling writing here’ KATHLEEN JAMIE, NEW STATESMAN ‘Wonderful’ ADAM NICOLSON ‘Exhilarating’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

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9780008329778

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PRAISE FOR ISLANDS OF ABANDONMENT 'Through meticulous research, lyrical writing and a nose for finding the biological and human oddballs, she lets each place tell its own unique story ... It made me think differently about nature, how it can survive in post-Apocalyptic environments, surprise the most eminent scientists and create beauty out of what we see as waste. Ultimately it shows how nature can heal a landscape broken by humans ... At a time when writing about nature can be depressing, a book that goes to the most depressing places on Earth and finds hope is a revelation' Louise Gray, author of The Ethical Carnivore 'Cal Flyn takes us on a mercurial expedition into the strange lands of human surrender. Aftermaths that evoke not restoration, but reclamation and wonder. Our absence brings presence. Liminal places that mark our historic fingerprints, where mysterious new worlds have begun to evolve. From toxic sludge to feral cattle to mutant fish to dystopian seas, out of the deathbeds of Lazarus we trip along, wide eyed. I cannot imagine a better guide. Thought-full, care-full, fascinating, poignant, mysterious, surreal, compelling, pace pitch-perfect. I could go on ... and on.' Keggie Carew, bestselling and prizewinning author of Dadland 'Islands of Abandonment gives a unique and necessary take on our planetary crisis. In uncovering the stories of nature's powers to rejuvenate and adapt even in the bleakest of circumstances, Cal Flyn spins a tale both tragic and shot through with hope, a finely crafted encapsulation of how it feels to live through these troubled times. Adam Weymouth, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2019

Author Information

Cal Flyn is a freelance journalist from the Highlands of Scotland. She has been a reporter for the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, and a contributing editor at The Week magazine. She has been published in the New Statesman, The Observer, The Independent, Telegraph Magazine and FT Weekend, and won the 2013 Brandt/Independent on Sunday travel writing prize. THICKER THAN WATER is her first book.

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