Land Sickness - by Nikolaj Schultz (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

As a heatwave hits Paris, the author's entire existence is disrupted and disoriented by the effects of climate change. All his normal reference points are destroyed. To escape the heat and his growing anxieties, he flees to the small Mediterranean island of Porquerolles. But even in this idyllic setting, can he escape the harsh realities of the Anthropocene?

Written as a fictionalized travelogue based on the author's own experiences, this inquiry into the issues raised by the climate crisis will be of interest to everyone concerned about the increasingly dire situation in which we find ourselves on our climate-damaged planet.

Review Quotes

"If there is a book which can mobilize us for the urgent ecological engagement, it is Land Sickness. It combines in a unique way the aesthetic pleasure of casual reading with the deepest existential engagement."
Slavoj Zizek

"This book is perhaps the first of a long series: a Bildungsroman, except that it is not about a self that adjusts to the social world, but about a self that no longer knows what to do with a natural world that exhausts it. Hence the hybrid genre of affects and theories."
Bruno Latour

"How to recover the self in and after the Anthropocene - this remarkable little book will work like an inspiring manual for those contemplating that task."
Dipesh Chakrabarty

"Nikolaj Schultz has given us a movingly rendered meditation on the moral dead ends we encounter as we attempt to navigate our way through the disorienting world of the Anthropocene. A unique and often tormented blend of personal struggle and ecological commentary that leaves the reader in a state of beautiful dread."
Clive Hamilton

"In beautiful prose that makes everyday moments seem profound, Schultz describes his life as a series of climate-related decisions... an ecological essay that raises important questions about what it means to live in a time of growing catastrophe."
Foreword Reviews (starred review)

"Nikolaj Schultz's Land Sickness chronicles his semi-fictionalised travelogue of his experience of climate change. He brilliantly meditates on the inescapability of the Anthropocene, the intimacy of the experience of climate breakdown, and planetary interconnection. Land Sickness is an urgent book about the many facets of our understanding of and interaction with our environment. As the late Bruno Latour told me: It is important to read Nikolaj Schultz."
Hans Ulrich Obrist

"With a unique blend of aesthetic pleasure and existential engagement, Schultz compels us to confront the urgent need for ecological activism ... an urgent and essential read."
Clandestine Magazine

"Nikolaj Schultz is the coming star of sociology"
Die Zeit

"What Camus or Sartre was for my generation, Nikolaj Schultz is to become for the generations growing up in times of climate collapse. This short, touching and poignant book perfectly captures our contemporary climate angst."
Srecko Horvat