Wild : An Elemental Journey

Winner of the Orion Book Award

Part travelogue, part manifesto for wildness as an essential character of life, Wild is a one-of-a-kind book from a one-of-a-kind author.

"Undefinable, untameable, profound and extraordinary." Observer

"A masterpiece." Maria Popova

"I took seven years over this work, spent all I had, my time, money and energy. Part of the journey was a green riot and part a deathly bleakness. I got ill, I got well. I went to the freedom fighters of West Papua and sang my head off in their highlands. I met cannibals infinitely kinder and more trustworthy than the murderous missionaries who evangelize them. I found a paradox of wildness in the glinting softness of its charisma, for what is savage is in the deepest sense gentle and what is wild is kind. In the end, a strangely sweet result, I came back to a wild home."

Wild describes an extraordinary odyssey, courageous and sometimes dangerous. It is by turns funny, touching and harrowing, and offers a poetic consideration of the tender connection between human society and wildlands.

"Easily the best travel book that I have read in the last ten years." Guardian

"Wild is like nothing else I've ever read: thrilling, troubling, frightening, exhilarating. This is a truly necessary book, and we are all lucky that the subject found a writer worthy of it." Philip Pullman

"Passionate, rigorous and utterly honest, Griffiths's remarkable book is written in a style as wild and exciting as its subject." Robert Macfarlane