Cry of the Wild - by Charles Foster (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

'Evocative and beautifully written, it's a deeply immersive read' Observer

'Enchanting and emotional...personifies its characters as they navigate the new wild and its trials.' Chris Packham

'Charles Foster is the most original voice in nature writing today - funny, urgent, poetic, philosophical and deeply moving' Patrick Barkham

'Utterly exhilarating... This book demands we change our ways' Lee Schofield

'There aren't many writers like Charles around... a deeply thought-provoking book' James Aldred

'Reading this book feels like being made suddenly omniscient. In other words, you really have to' Tom Moorhouse

'Astonishingly playful, humorous, immensely varied and outrageously intelligent... The most inventive British writer presently at work on the theme of nature' Mark Cocker

What is it like to live in a world built by humans? These eight genre-blending stories reveal the complexity, beauty and fragility of wild lives - a brilliantly modern twist on classics like Watership Down and Tarka the Otter.

We have long since isolated ourselves from our fellow animals, banishing them into exile and dominating the land they once roamed. But still they endure on the edges of our existence: a fox grown strong on pepperoni pizza from the dustbins of the East End, a rabbit dodging a bullet, a gannet diving through an oil slick.

In spellbinding prose, Charles Foster gives us a bird's eye view, or indeed an orca's or an otter's, of the wonders and struggles of the natural world.

At once exhilarating and deeply moving, Cry of the Wild reconnects us with our animal side and brings us face to face, or whisker to whisker, with eight creatures (including humans) that we have pushed to the fringes, imploring us to change our ways.

Review Quotes

Highly imaginative... Evocative and beautifully written, it's a deeply immersive read.--Observer

Charles Foster is the most original voice in nature writing today - funny, urgent, poetic, philosophical and deeply moving. These shape-shifting, illuminating stories send us into the souls of other animals, bequeathing them personhood and giving us precious enlightenment and, hopefully, the inspiration to take action.--Patrick Barkham, author of Wild Green Wonders

Utterly exhilarating. Cry of the Wild gives us the chance to viscerally inhabit the lives of a cast of wild creatures as they navigate the rigours of a changed world. By turns tragic and joyful, every story yields fascinating insights into the way our fellow earthlings make their way through life. Through their eyes, we see ourselves, and the unholy ecological havoc we're wreaking. With the power both to move and to shame us, this book demands that we change our ways.--Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell

Cry of the Wild is spectacular and unique. It is beautiful and engrossing, full of erudition and heart. Foster's detailed eloquence brings us within a chromosome's thickness of experiencing first-hand our impacts on the lives of his eight wild protagonists - so that reading this book feels like being made suddenly omniscient. In other words, you really have to.--Tom Moorhouse, author of Ghosts in the Hedgerow

Charles Foster's new volume of animal stories may be challenging in content and deadly serious in terms of its moral purpose, but his prose is also astonishingly playful, humorous, immensely varied and outrageously intelligent. For my money he is the most inventive British writer presently at work on the theme of nature. --Mark Cocker, author of Our Place

There aren't many writers like Charles around... His ability to step across emotional boundaries and enter the consciousness of the wild makes for an exhilarating, immersive, yet at times disturbing read. For me, the end result is a deeply thought-provoking book that encourages the reader to explore for themselves exactly where they stand on issues of humanity, conservation and moral legacy.--James Aldred, author of Goshawk Summer

Fiercely polemical, forcing the reader to see the world in a new light... Charles Foster is an original thinker with a strangely compelling prose style... Cry of the Wild is thought-provoking, profound, at times infused with a beautifully wistful lyricism and often witty.--Country Life

Foster [brings] a sense of wonder geese fly in from the north with snow falling from their wings; imagined through the eyes of a young rabbit, a white owl wafts through the still night air like thistledown, a strangely beautiful occurrence that might at any moment end the rabbit's life... He avoids the temptations of anthropomorphism while reminding us that we who share these traits are more vulnerably and elegantly animal than we pretend.--Literary Review

A lyrical work of creative nonfiction containing eight stories of besieged animal lives. Emotional without being anthropomorphic, it is a thought-provoking read.--BBC Wildlife Magazine

Ardent and arresting... one of the darkest, most haunting books I've read in a long time... Yet the stories are also motivated by such depth of attention and love that their very existence offers some hope for a better future.--New Statesman

About the Author

Charles Foster is a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for nature writing, and won the Ig Nobel Prize for Biology and the 30 Millions d'Amis Prize. He is a fellow of Exeter College, University of Oxford, and has particular passions for Greece, waves, the Upper Palaeolithic, mountains and swifts.