The New Wilderness

Diane Cook’s extraordinary novel is both a blazing lament for our contempt for nature and a deeply humane portrayal of motherhood.

In a world ravaged by climate change, Bea’s five-year-old daughter is wasting away, consumed by the pollution of the metropolis they call home. If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. There is only one alternative: Wilderness State. Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, Bea and Agnes slowly learn how to survive on this unpredictable, often dangerous land. But as Agnes embraces the wild freedom of her new existence, Bea realises that saving her daughter’s life means losing her in a different way.  Yet just as these modern nomads come to think of the Wilderness State as home, its future is threatened when the Government discovers a new use for the land. Now the migrants must choose to stay and fight for their place in the wilderness, their home, or trust the Rangers and their promises of a better tomorrow elsewhere.

‘Wonderfully imagined and written, this is a tense future-shock novel that's also a tender exploration of a mother-daughter relationship under extreme pressure.'  -  2020 Booker Prize Judges

Diane Cook is a critically acclaimed novelist and short story writer. A former producer for the radio show, This American Life, she lives in Brooklyn.