Wild : An Elemental Journey

Published 01/05/2008 | Paperback / softback,
Description:

WINNER OF THE ORION BOOK AWARD Part travelogue, part manifesto for wildness as an essential character of life, Wild is a one-of-a-kind book from a one-of-a-kind author’Undefinable, untameable, profound and extraordinary’ Observer’A masterpiece’ Maria Popova’I took seven years over this work, spent all I had, my time, money and energy. Part of the journey was a green riot and part a deathly bleakness. I got ill, I got well. I went to the freedom fighters of West Papua and sang my head off in their highlands. I met cannibals infinitely kinder and more trustworthy than the murderous missionaries who evangelize them. I found a paradox of wildness in the glinting softness of its charisma, for what is savage is in the deepest sense gentle and what is wild is kind. In the end – a strangely sweet result – I came back to a wild home.’Wild describes an extraordinary odyssey, courageous and sometimes dangerous. It is by turns funny, touching and harrowing, and offers a poetic consideration of the tender connection between human society and wildlands. ‘Easily the best travel book that I have read in the last ten years’ Guardian’Wild is like nothing else I’ve ever read: thrilling, troubling, frightening, exhilarating. This is a truly necessary book, and we are all lucky that the subject found a writer worthy of it’ Philip Pullman’Passionate, rigorous and utterly honest, Griffiths’s remarkable book is written in a style as wild and exciting as its subject’ Robert Macfarlane