Alexandria, Paul Kingsnorth

Paul Kingsnorth’s Buckmaster trilogy, a much looser series, also draws to a close this year. It began in 2014 with The Wake, an extraordinary book written in a mongrel form of Old English and set in the aftermath of the Norman invasion; the final volume, Alexandria (Faber, May), fast-forwards to “the far side […]

Read More

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, Michael Zapata

Through litanies of the names of overlooked poets and science fiction writers of color, through multiple survival stories from New Orleanians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, through deep and heartbreaking asides about Argentinian and Bolshevik revolutionaries, Zapata shows that the multiverses we crave are contained within each person, each […]

Read More

The Last Wave, Pankaj Sekhsaria

Ever the aimless drifter, Harish finds the anchor his life needs in a chance encounter with members of the ancient and threatened – Jarawa community-the ‘original people’ of the Andaman Islands and its tropical rain forests. As he observes the slow but sure destruction of everything the Jarawa require for […]

Read More

The Wild Lands, Paul Greci

In Paul Greci’s The Wild Lands, Travis and his sister are trapped in a daily race to survive–and there is no second place. Natural disasters and a breakdown of civilization have cut off Alaska from the world and destroyed its landscape. Now, as food runs out and the few who […]

Read More

The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez

A hundred years from now, a starship engineer named Fumiko works to design starships that will help lift humanity away from a climate change-ravaged Earth… –Polygon Vanished Birds is a mysterious science fiction tale bathed in beautiful prose that offers glimpses of a future of seasons changing, stars within reach, […]

Read More

Song for a Whale, Lynne Kelly

Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly Middle Grade Fiction Sometimes a book just stops you in your tracks and demands that you sit with it, pushing aside as many demands of “real life” as you can in order to lose yourself in the book’s world. […]

Read More

Weather, Jenny Offill

The mammoth threat of climate change looms large over the ephemera of modern life in this novel filled with dread and humour. –Esquire From the author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation–one of the New York Times Book Review‘s Ten Best Books of the Year–a shimmering tour de […]

Read More

Disappearing Earth: A Novel, Julia Phillips

Click here to return to the series This month’s spotlight goes to a country not showcased before in the world eco-fiction series: Russia, specifically the Kamchatka peninsula, which dips down from the far eastern coastline of the country and lies between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea. It […]

Read More

Strange Birds, Celia C. Pérez

Selected as one of our January features for Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation, Strange Birds: a field guide to ruffling feathers is Florida-based juvenile fiction. Abstract: After Ofelia, Aster, Cat, and Lane fail to persuade a local girls club to change an outdated tradition, they form an alternative group […]

Read More

Split Tooth, Tanya Taqaq

This book is being read and discussed at the Cambridge Ecofiction Bookclub in January 2020. According to Goodreads, Veering back and forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, and ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where […]

Read More

Sool, Cho Dharman

According to Times India, Tamil writer Cho Dharman won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2019. The novel is a “burning portrait of the environmental and ecological disaster in Tamil Nadu.” The story takes place in Urulaikkudi, the native village of Mr. Dharman, and he has captured the destruction of the […]

Read More

Shadow Flicker, Melissa Volker

Click here to return to the series About the Book It’s coming on winter, yet I’m heading into warm sunshine, surf, and sand–with my mind freshly ensconced in Melissa Volker’s novel Shadow Flicker (Karavan Press, 2019), which immersed me into beautiful east South African beaches and surfing life. Despite the […]

Read More

Ned Hayes’ The Eagle Tree

The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes (Little A, 2016) Young adult contemporary fiction Review by Kimberly Christensen To say that fourteen-year-old March Wong loves trees is an understatement. He climbs multiple trees per day and can cite endless amount of information about trees, from information about their species to how […]

Read More

Klimakvartetten Series, Maja Lunde

We originally posted The History of Bees in June 2017 and then updated this post in December 2019 with the second two books in the Klimakvartetten series. In the spirit of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go, this dazzling and ambitious literary debut follows three generations of beekeepers from […]

Read More