Cry of the Wild

Cry of the Wild

Life through the eyes of eight animals

Summary

'Evocative and beautifully written, it's a deeply immersive read' Observer

'Enchanting and emotional...personifies its characters as they navigate the new wild and its trials.' Chris Packham

'Charles Foster is the most original voice in nature writing today - funny, urgent, poetic, philosophical and deeply moving' Patrick Barkham

'Utterly exhilarating... This book demands we change our ways' Lee Schofield

'There aren't many writers like Charles around... a deeply thought-provoking book' James Aldred

'Reading this book feels like being made suddenly omniscient. In other words, you really have to' Tom Moorhouse

'Astonishingly playful, humorous, immensely varied and outrageously intelligent... The most inventive British writer presently at work on the theme of nature' Mark Cocker

What is it like to live in a world built by humans? These eight genre-blending stories reveal the complexity, beauty and fragility of wild lives - a brilliantly modern twist on classics like Watership Down and Tarka the Otter.

We have long since isolated ourselves from our fellow animals, banishing them into exile and dominating the land they once roamed. But still they endure on the edges of our existence: a fox grown strong on pepperoni pizza from the dustbins of the East End, a rabbit dodging a bullet, a gannet diving through an oil slick.


In spellbinding prose, Charles Foster gives us a bird’s eye view, or indeed an orca’s or an otter’s, of the wonders and struggles of the natural world.

At once exhilarating and deeply moving, Cry of the Wild reconnects us with our animal side and brings us face to face, or whisker to whisker, with eight creatures (including humans) that we have pushed to the fringes, imploring us to change our ways.

Reviews

  • Highly imaginative... Evocative and beautifully written, it's a deeply immersive read.
    Observer

About the author

Charles Foster

Charles Foster is a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for nature writing, and won the Ig Nobel Prize for Biology and the 30 Millions d'Amis Prize. He is a fellow of Exeter College, University of Oxford, and has particular passions for Greece, waves, the Upper Palaeolithic, mountains and swifts.
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