Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape

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Cal Flyn Has recently been shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.

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Dotted around our planet are numerous areas now devoid of human habitation: ghost towns, conflict zones, pollution hotspots, and areas wrecked by natural forces. And yet, Flyn sees the same everywhere; humans leave* and nature comes rushing back in like an unstoppable tide. There is no fury or gnashing of teeth here; instead, her calmly hypnotic tones chime with the richly descriptive and atmospheric nature of her prose.

But for me, I need to see that sort of glint of light and and, you know, the plants coming through the cracks in the pavement for me to understand what the route forward is. A vivid reflection on the “post-human landscape”, Islands of Abandonment finds its author embarking on a series of bold expeditions to examine the marks left on our land after humans have retreated. We pay respect by giving voice to social justice, acknowledging our shared history and valuing the cultures of First Nations. A dark howl of decay and human hubris, shot through with the inevitable rebirth of nature, this book haunted me long after I finished it. Surprisingly rich in ecological and biological detail, Islands of Abandonment is a poetic and spellbinding travelogue.Cal Flyn takes us on a mercurial expedition into the strange lands of human surrender … Thoughtful, careful, fascinating, poignant, mysterious, surreal, compelling, pace pitch-perfect.

On Montserrat, the village of Plymouth was buried by the eruption of a volcano that “ is a known erratic, a drunken lout known to stir into destructive rage even after years of troubled sleep” (p. 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. I know that when I think about the environment when I think about climate change and all the damage that's been done, it is overpowering and I think to move on and to keep going every day it is important for us to have that sense of hope and optimism. Abandoned ship scrapyards around New York hide a darker legacy of soil and sludge laced with lethal levels of dioxins, PCBs, and pesticides that is best left undisturbed. 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.

I hope that it will make people focus on the future and when I say the future I mean not next year or the year after but possibly beyond our own generations. Maybe painstaking is the wrong word, she opines, for it “ implies slow deliberate travel in a single direction. Yet, having acknowledged the devastation humans have wrought, she finds cause for optimism in the most desolate terrain where vegetation has flourished and the animal kingdom has adapted.

Flyn reveals how “when a place has been altered beyond recognition and all hope seems lost, it might still hold the potential for life of another kind”.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 West Lothian, Scotland, Flyn climbs enormous slag heaps of spent shale dating to Scotland’s 1860s–1920s heydays of oil production. Flyn sees the same everywhere; humans leave and nature comes rushing back in like an unstoppable tide. This sees her engage with the Ehrlichs and the Scrantons of this world who believe it is already too late, that the geological forces put into motion will run their course no matter what, and that the best we can do is brace for impact.