Islands of Abandonment

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?

About the Author

Cal Flyn is a 28-year-old freelance journalist from the Highlands of Scotland. Previously she has been a reporter for both The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph, and a contributing editor at The Week magazine. She has been published in titles including the New Statesman, The Observer, The Independent, Prospect, Telegraph Magazine, The New Inquiry and FT Weekend, and recently won the 2013 Bradt/Independent on Sunday travel-writing prize for an article about the winter she spent training huskies and fjord horses in the Arctic.

Cal holds a MA in Experimental Psychology from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a NCTJ certificate in newspaper journalism from Lambeth College. ‘Thicker Than Water’ is her first book.