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THE SUNDAY TIMES' BESTSELLER AND SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR

WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT CONSERVATION AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE

This is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man's lands and fortress islands - and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place.

In Chernobyl, following the nuclear disaster, only a handful of people returned to their dangerously irradiated homes. On an uninhabited Scottish island, feral cattle live entirely wild. In Detroit, once America's fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods.

This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live - or survive in tiny, precarious numbers - to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind's impact on nature is forced to stop. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world - and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we're gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone?

More praise for Islands of Abandonment

'Extraordinary ... Just when you thought there was nowhere left to explore, along comes an author with a new category of terrain ... Dazzling' SPECTATOR

'A haunting look at how nature fights back ... Beautiful, evocative' SUNDAY TIMES

'Flyn's brave, thorough book sets out to explore places where angels fear to tread ... The result is fascinating, eerie and strange ... There is some thrilling writing here' KATHLEEN JAMIE, NEW STATESMAN

'Wonderful' ADAM NICOLSON

'Exhilarating' DAILY TELEGRAPH

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*Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize*

'A fascinating exploration of the linkages between ancestral inheritance, diasporic belonging, and our climate future... I read it in one sitting, which took me on a moving and often unexpected journey' Aube Rey Lescure

'Part of me knew what the hungry ghosts wanted all along, what they still want. It is not vengeance. No, they want something else, but we refuse to listen. They want us to face up to our broken obligations.'

Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people return to their home villages in China to sweep the tombs of their ancestors, making offerings of food and incense to prevent them from becoming hungry ghosts that could cause misfortune. Yet for the past century, a time ruptured by war and revolution, many tombs have been left unattended. Following a record year of wildfires, Alice Mah returns to her family's rice village in South China, and discovers that her ancestors are almost forgotten, and there are no tombs left to sweep. Instead, there are incalculable clan debts to be paid.

Here Mah chronicles her journey from the rice villages of South China to her home in post-industrial England, through the Chinatowns of Western Canada where she grew up, to the isles and industry of Scotland where she now lives. As years pass and fires rage on, she becomes increasingly troubled by her ancestors' neglected graves. Her research on pollution gives way to growing eco-anxiety, culminating in a crisis of spiritual belief.

A haunting blend of memoir, cultural history and environmental exploration, Red Pockets confronts the hungry ghosts of our neglected ancestors, while searching for an acceptable offering. What do we owe to past and future generations? What do we owe to the places that we inhabit?

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The Knowledge

Learning from Indigenous Wisdom to Save Our Changing Global Environment

by Victor Steffensen