Eradication - by Jonathan Miles (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A blackly comic literary gem in which a broken man confronts a broken world on an uninhabited Pacific island, where a conservation assignment becomes a moral reckoning.

"An instant classic." --The Washington Post - "Excellent " --The New York Times - "Urgent and lyrical." --NPR

"Beautifully weird, eerie, unexpected -- a story for our times."--Kevin Barry, author of The Heart in Winter

Reeling from tragedy, former jazz musician-turned-schoolteacher Adi answers a job listing offering a chance to save the world. The assignment: spend five weeks alone on the tiny Pacific island of Santa Flora, restoring an ecological balance gone dangerously awry by an invasive population of goats. Though he has no experience in wildlife management, he is hired anyway. Armed with little more than survival gear and uneasy resolve, he sets out to remove what doesn't belong.

But the mission is not what it seems. The threats to the once-Edenic island aren't what his employers claim. Complicating things further, he discovers he's not alone on the island. Fearful for his own life, and for the fate of the island's, Adi spends his sun-drenched days rooting out the true threat to Santa Flora and by extension, to the world it occupies. As isolation deepens and doubt takes hold, he finds the boundaries between duty and redemption, preservation and harm, growing harder to define.

A desert-island meditation on love, grief, and solitude, as well as a jolt to your emotional core, Eradication is an unforgettable reading experience and a bold work of imagination. With this fourth novel, Jonathan Miles, "a fluid, confident, and profoundly talented writer" (Dave Eggers), delivers his most compelling work yet.

Review Quotes

"Excellent . . . Threaded throughout the novel -- which Miles helpfully terms a 'fable' -- is a patient, skillful reveal . . . a fable within the fable that sharpens and complicates these finely drawn moral dilemmas. . . . Miles considers the complicated ethics and logistics of eliminating an invasive species."
--The New York Times

"An instant classic . . . A brilliant melding of environmental mourning and personal grief . . . The moment I finished, I was reminded of Emily Dickinson's description of true poetry: 'I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off.' . . . Miles has an uncanny ability to create a terrifying kind of momentum, a swelling of alarm that propels the story from bumbling comedy to moral terror. . . . [Eradication is] basically, Hamlet but with goats."
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"Urgent and lyrical . . . I closed [Eradication] and felt stirrings of Lord Of The Flies and The Old Man And The Sea."
--Scott Simon, NPR Weekend Editon

"Like a great improvised jazz solo, Miles' tale is both freewheeling and tightly contained. Complex, funny and sad, it is full of big ideas about planet, place and both social and ecological hierarchy. Just brilliant."
--Marie Claire UK

"Gripping . . . Eradication: A Fable is [Miles'] best yet. . . . Only Miles could unspool this tale--one of love, grief, solitude, and a burning moral question."
--Garden & Gun

"Tight and lyrical, the writing calls to mind other recent ecological thrillers such as Daniel Kraus's Whalefall, although the surreal goats and Adi's hapless reverence also recall Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. Full of captivating dialogue and shimmering images . . . Miles's tale accelerates to a gripping final act."
--Science

"A slim novel [that] makes admirable use of that brevity to deliver a powerful and memorable reading experience."
--Bookreporter

[Readers] can . . . be grateful for what [Miles has] delivered: a sharp, funny novel of ideas that bristles with rage at what humanity can wreak on the world."
--BookBrowse

"[Eradication blew] the top of my head off. I thought it was incredibly powerful, timely, disturbing, funny. Everything just came together with an ending you just never forget. . . . It is just so concentrated and so focused, there isn't . . . a spare page."
--Ron Charles, Diane Rehm's Substack Podcast

"Every single page comes alive. . . . I loved, absolutely loved, reading [Eradication]."
--Diane Rehm, Diane Rehm's Substack Podcast

"Claire Keegan, George Orwell, James Baldwin, Sigrid Nunez, and F. Scott Fitzgerald have all written breathtakingly brilliant short novels. Add to that list Jonathan Miles. . . . [Eradication is] among the most brilliant, beautiful short novels ever."
--Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives and The Jackal's Mistress

"In Eradication, Jonathan Miles tackles the brutal paradoxes of ecological conservation with both unflinching clarity and comedic flair. When saving an imperilled Eden means eliminating [sacrificing?] one species -- whose only crime is to 'refuse to stop living' -- to protect dozens more, there are no easy answers. A deft, unsettling exploration of what it means to play God."
--Maria Reva, author of Endling

"Beautifully weird, eerie, unexpected -- a story for our times, and all powered by the writer's tremendous narrative imagination."
--Kevin Barry, author of The Heart in Winter and Night Boat to Tangier

"A work of genius. From the beginning Adi is an endearing castaway of sorts, marooned from his former life, well-employed but hopelessly ill-suited to the grim job at hand. But strangely the best possible witness to his own (our own) role in the natural and unnatural order, whatever that may be. What struck me is the way Miles can pivot seamlessly, symphonically, from a fist-gnawing comedy of errors to a heartbreaking requiem for a habitat, a world, a near-extinct Reed Warbler, a son, resolving into a shocking and defiant denouement. Eradication is a beautiful and devastating novel."
--Luke Kennard, author of The Transition

"[Eradication] blew me out of my socks. . . . Short and powerful . . . The second I finished it, I immediately reread it."
--Susan Casey, author of Voices in the Ocean

"Miles' observational skills are on fine display--the offbeat premise is fully convincing. . . . An allegory about contempt for immigrants, our propensity for violence, our relationship to the environment (and the harm we bring upon it), our need for connection, and more . . . A stark, propulsive, and timely man-versus-nature tale."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Incisive . . . An excellent storyteller, Miles leavens the grim material with moments of dark comedy and shepherds the plot to a series of poignant revelations. . . . This one sneaks up on the reader."
-Publishers Weekly

"Provocative . . . Miles' captivating and entertaining novel poses awkward and thought-provoking questions about how to address the climate crisis."
--Booklist

"[A] clever, innovative tale . . . Miles contrasts lush descriptions of the island setting with snippets of bleakly casual dialogue, channeling both realism and absurdity. . . . [Eradication] can be savored in just one or two sittings."
--BookPage

"Miles's taut, powerful fable pits an everyman against seemingly insurmountable environmental and personal problems."
--Shelf Awareness

"Concentrated [and] powerful . . . Eradication earns its claim as a modern classic through discipline. It is exact about what it depicts and honest about what it withholds. . . . The book feels finished in the deeper sense -- a work readers will return to."
--The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

"So much of Eradication is a novel of profound, truly human and humane questions. . . . Miles is masterful with his scenes and scene changes, with his characters -- all a mix of serious and humorous, and the way he ensures humanity is not so much the center of things, but still a vital part of them nonetheless. . . . A grand-scale breakout novel."
--The Clarion-Ledger

"[Eradication] resides comfortably at the nexus of nature-writing, philosophical allegory, and adventure story. . . . A brilliant meditation on the place of humanity in a violent world . . . Passages of extraordinary descriptive and lyrical power, some of the best nature writing I have read."
--The Pittsburgh Review of Books

About the Author

JONATHAN MILES is the author of the novels Dear American Airlines and Want Not, both New York Times Notable books, and the novel Anatomy of a Miracle. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The New York Times, where he served as a columnist. In 2024 he toured as a multi-instrumentalist in the band of the Grammy-winning artist Jon Batiste. He currently serves as Writer-in-Residence at the Solebury School in New Hope, Pennsylvania.