“Captures the dread, sadness, and wonder of beholding the results of humanity's destructive impulse”

The New Yorker

“Vital... offers cautious optimism for the fate of the planet's species”

Washington Post

Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and post-industrial hinterlands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place.

  • A Sunday Times bestseller

  • Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and the John Burroughs Medal

  • Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, the Wainwright Prize for writing on global conservation, the British Academy Book Prize, the Richard Jefferies Award, the Highland Book Prize, and for Scottish Nonfiction Book of the Year

“Extraordinary … dazzling”

Thomas Hodgkinson, The Spectator

“Brave, thorough … Fascinating, eerie and strange”

Kathleen Jamie, New Statesman

“Brilliant … vivid … clear and compelling” ★★★★★

Michael Kerr, The Daily Telegraph

“Fascinating and brain-energising … Makes the imagination fizz”

Robbie Millen, The Times

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. Exploring extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – Islands of Abandonment give us a glimpse of what nature gets up to when we’re not there to see it. 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?

US cover.jpeg

“Scintillating … Flyn's research is meticulous, but what makes the book so extraordinary is the originality of her thought”

Dani Garavelli, The Herald

“Consistently rewarding, eloquently provocative … A brave book, in more ways than one”

Mathew Lyons, New Humanist

“Lyrical … A thoughtful, fascinating read”

Martin Chilton, The Independent

“Bracing, eye-opening, comprehensive, and essential … An energizing and important work.”

Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation

Publishers

UK  • William Collins • out now
US • Viking • out now 

In translation:
Dutch • Atlas Contact • out now
Italian • Edizioni di Atlantide • out now
Spanish • Capitán Swing • out now
Norwegian • Forlaget Press • out now
German • Matthes & Seitz • 12 October 2023
Japanese • Soshisha • to come
Simplified Chinese • Shanghai 99 • to come
Korean • Munhakdongne • to come
Czech • Leda • to come
Catalan • Saldonar • to come
Complex Chinese • Business Weekly Publications • to come
Polish • Otwarte • to come
Hungarian • Park • to come
French • tba

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Thicker Than Water