Knowledge book of the year 2024 in the SURPRISE category
The ghost town of Detroit, the death zone around the reactor in Chernobyl, the earth scarred after war battles in Verdun, France, or the Salton Sea in California contaminated with arsenic and pesticides: these are sad, desolate, orphaned places that the Scottish essayist Cal Flyn chose for her chose an unusual two-year exploration trip. Places that people have long since left due to war, illness or other disasters.
What draws the author there? It cannot be the appeal of the untouched, because it is humans who caused the visible destruction in these twelve “lost places”. In addition to the great man-made damage, Cal Flyn recognizes the unshakable resilience, the amazing power of nature that takes back what once belonged to it – a glimmer of hope in all the sadness. Plants grow in the minefields and draw pollutants out of the earth. New hybrids between native and invasive species are emerging. Once domesticated animals are becoming wild animals again. “In these natural laboratories we can observe how our living environments are constantly changing,” says Flyn.
As a sensitive, knowledgeable observer of flora and fauna, the author invites us on a journey that we would probably never have undertaken ourselves. Her message points to the future and is conciliatory: there is hope that in all these places “perhaps there is still potential for a different form of life.” Nicola Wessinghage
Cal Flynn
ABANDONED PLACES
Ends and beginnings in a deserted world
Translated by Milena Adam
Matthes & Seitz Natural Studies, 344 pages, € 34.–
ISBN 978-3-7518-4004-0