The new book from the bestselling and multi-award-winning author of The Outrun - on the ecology of love and heartbreak, the urban environment and the digital age
'I loved this book' Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path
'Utterly absorbing' Lucy Jones, author of Losing Eden
Wishing to leave behind the quiet isolation of her Orkney island life, Amy Liptrot books a one-way flight to Berlin. Searching for new experiences, inspiration and love, she rents a loftbed in a shared flat and looks for work. She explores the streets, nightclubs and parks and seeks out the city's wildlife - goshawks, raccoons and hooded crows. She looks for love through the screen of her laptop.
Over the course of a year Amy makes space hoping for the unexpected. And it comes with an erotic jolt, in the form of a love affair that obsesses her.
The Instant is an unapologetic look at the addictive power of love and lust. It is also an exploration of the cycles of the moon, the flight paths of migratory birds, the mesmerising power of Neolithic stonework and the trails followed by a generation who exist online.
About the Author
Amy Liptrot is the author of The Outrun, which was a Sunday Times bestseller. She writes columns and reviews for various magazines and newspapers including the Guardian and the Spectator, and recently presented the BBC Radio 4 series The New Anatomy of Melancholy. The Outrun was awarded the Wainwright Prize and the PEN Ackerley Prize, and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. It was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and featured on the BBC Radio 2 Book Club.
Industry Reviews
'I loved this book, such an intimate portrayal of emotional landscapes and the pull of the moon - it's one I'll return to often' - RAYNOR WINN
'Intoxicating, generous and refreshingly original. The way Liptrot weaves her inner life with the natural world and the digital world is utterly absorbing. This book is so alive and so wild' - LUCY JONES
'Elegant, melancholic and deeply yearning, The Instant captures something vital about our age: its strange dislocations and connections. I drank it in' - KATHERINE MAY
'A book of rare power. Part heartbreaking love story, part pin-sharp exploration of relationships in the digital age, The Instant is an intense and intensely beautiful book about connection, longing and the gravitational power of nature, and human nature, on the heart' - ROB COWEN
'Wildness lurks in the edges of this book - nature in its more feral state, and unashamed eroticism. I gulped this slim, powerful, ravishing little book down in one' - CAL FLYN
'An astute exploration of longing and loneliness in a time when we've never been better connected or more distant. Most of all, I admire Amy's patience. The Instant is proof of what good can come from time, and waiting, and the thinking that accompanies both. I loved it' - ALICE VINCENT
