Well, there’s eco-poetry (serious and important), and The Eco-Comedy Video Festival (naf so far, unfortunately), so I think eco-fiction is still fresh. God knows we need gallows humour when contemplating the state of the planet. -Author interview, Stuff, New Zealand The Ice Shelf is an electrifying allegory for the dangers […]
Read MoreLiterary
She Would Be King, Wayétu Moore
Animals have inspired some of the most memorable moments in African storytelling. In 17th century Ethiopia, Galawdewos repeatedly relies on the appearance or the death of animals to portray Walatta Petros’ miraculous saintly power. When animals are incorporated in ritual process, the visual effect is powerful. The image of Ozidi […]
Read MoreThe Forbidden Place, Susanne Jansson
A book, television show, or movie set somewhere in Scandinavia leads the reader or viewer to expect dark, foreboding landscapes and ominous, threatening events. Susanne Jansson’s sparkling debut novel The Forbidden Place fulfills these expectations in a myriad of absorbing ways. –Run Spot Run In the remote Swedish wetlands lies […]
Read MoreThe River, Peter Heller
The real delight is the nature writing. The River is a fiction addition to the New Landscape writing of Robert Macfarlane and Rebecca Solnit, prose so vivid and engaging that a city-dwelling reviewer can feel the clammy cold of a fog over a river or the heat of subterranean tree roots […]
Read MoreBangkok Wakes to Rain, Pitchaya Sudbanthad
Recreates the experience of living in Thailand’s aqueous climate so viscerally that you can feel the water rising around your ankles. -Ron Charles, Washington Post Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads
Read MoreTo Follow Elephants, Rick Hodges
Click here to return to the series In today’s world series, we travel back to the continent of Africa, this time with author Rick Hodges; we talk about his visits to Kenya and his new novel To Follow Elephants (Stormbird Press, March 2019). Stick around, because this summer we will […]
Read MoreOil on Water, Helon Habila
Habila’s spare but vivid prose takes the reader from the tenements of the working poor to the mansions of oil executives, from the camps of armed militants to peaceful, quasi-monastic communities devoted to the worship of nature gods. But as diverse as Nigeria is, the entire country has one common, […]
Read MoreLast Ones Left Alive, Sarah Davis-Goff
In Last Ones Left Alive (Tinder Press) the Irish writer Sarah Davis-Goff, co-founder of the fine independent publisher Tramp Press, imagines a post-apocalyptic Ireland stalked by a zombie-like menace, the skrake. –New Statesman LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE is the story of Orpen, a young woman who must walk on foot across […]
Read MoreDoggerland, Ben Smith
Debut novelist Ben Smith enters the scene with Doggerland (Fourth Estate), a haunting story set on a huge wind farm in some unspecified time after climate disaster has rendered most of what was once the landscape uninhabitable and survivors are in thrall to an organisation known only as the Company. –New Statesman […]
Read MoreThe Wild Birds, Emily Strelow
Emily Strelow’s mesmerizing debut stitches together a sprawling saga of the feral Northwest across farmlands and deserts and generations: an American mosaic alive with birdsong and gunsmoke, held together by a silver box of eggshells—a long-ago gift from a mother to her daughter. Written with grace, grit, and an acute […]
Read MoreCrudo: A Novel, Olivia Laing
Paste Magazine calls Laing’s Crudo one of the best novels in 2018 and states: Crudo centers on Kathy, who has just turned 40 and is soon getting married, as she navigates her own changing life against the backdrop of Brexit, the Trump residency, the migrant crisis, climate change and the […]
Read MoreHawk, Jennifer Dance
See our global eco-fiction spotlight on Jennifer Dance’s White Feather collection at Dragonfly.eco. Hawk, a First Nations teen from northern Alberta, is a cross-country runner who aims to win gold in an upcoming competition between all the schools in Fort McMurray. But when Hawk discovers he has leukemia, his identity […]
Read MoreUndergrowth, Nancy Burke
In this luminous novel, the all-too-human experiences of fear, love and loss become amplified with potentially disastrous consequences. In 1960s Brazil, an indigenous group is on the brink of a tragedy, the dimensions of which they are only beginning to grasp. A small band of disaffected government agents, academics and […]
Read MoreMagdalena Mountain, Michael Pyle
“Magdalena Mountain” is a novel, a work of fiction, but it contains a good deal of nonfiction, in the sense of the traditional nature writing that people know from my books in the past. That is, one of the main characters is a butterfly, a real butterfly, called the Magdalena […]
Read MoreElmet, Fiona Mozley
Fresh and distinctive writing from an exciting new voice in fiction, Elmet is an unforgettable novel about family, as well as a beautiful meditation on landscape. [Winner of the Man Booker Prize, 2017] Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads
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