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. Shortlisted for this year’s Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction (the winner is announced on 16 November), the book describes the isolated and often eerily dystopian fortress islands, irradiated exclusion zones, abandoned towns and shuttered industrial sites that have been recolonised by the natural world.
Flyn, who hails from the Scottish Highlands, reads the audiobook herself. 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. She visits Chernobyl, where she meets the residents who have finally returned to their homes, and spends a night on an uninhabited Scottish island where feral cattle, the descendants of cows left by fleeing farmers in the 1970s, roam free. Elsewhere, she travels to Estonia and the land that was once the site of Soviet-era collective farms, and to Plymouth in Montserrat, a town entombed under 40 feet of mud and lava save for the tops of the buildings.
This is far from a grand tour of the world’s beauty spots; some of Flyn’s destinations are the most damaged on Earth. 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”.
• Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape is available on William Collins, 9hr, 6min.
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