The Savage Landscape - by Cal Flyn (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A lyrical exploration of the world's wildest, most forbiddingly remote places--and the humans who have always been there, by an award-winning and critically acclaimed writer

From the blacksand beaches of Iceland, to river crossings deep in the Amazon jungle, to the barren beauty of Antarctica, wilderness is a powerful, ancient concept, lying at the intersection of landscape, philosophy, and ecology. And for thousands of years, people have sought out uncontrolled, unknown, or uncharted nature in search of religious epiphany, self-actualization, and an escape from modern life. More recently these "pristine" places have been seen as the subject of a last effort to repair a planet imperiled by humans.

But as award-winning writer Cal Flyn traverses the most forbidding, untamed and inhospitable wild lands--the supposedly uninhabited wilds of the world--she finds that such truly untouched lands don't exist: Nearly every wilderness has been or is actively inhabited by humans. Here we meet ascetics in search of theophany in the desert; lonely shepherds running off wolves under the stars; missionaries preaching from shacks deep in the jungle; wise lamas meditating under lofty mountain peaks.

The Savage Landscape takes us into these breathtaking wilds--deep into dark forests, to the tops of mountains, and into the hearts of deserts--asking provocative questions about the nature of wilderness, its preservation, and its meaning.

About the Author

Cal Flyn is the deputy editor of the literary recommendations site Five Books, is a regular contributor to The Guardian, and has written for Granta, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Cal was a MacDowell fellow, a writer in residence at Gladstone's Library and at the Jan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland and a 2022 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. She was the winner of the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the John Burroughs Medal and was a finalist for the Wainwright Prize, the British Academy Book Prize, the Ondaatje Prize, and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.