Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves. From the bestselling author of H is for Hawk comes Vesper Flights, a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best-loved writing along with new pieces covering a thrilling range of subjects. There are essays here on headaches, on catching swans, on hunting mushrooms, on twentiethcentury spies, on numinous experiences and high-rise buildings; on nests and wild pigs and the tribulations of farming ostriches. Vesper Flights is a book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make the world around us. Moving and frank, personal and political, it confirms Helen Macdonald as one of this century’s greatest nature writers.
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“A collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep…meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight…She writes with heart-tugging clarity.”
— BuzzFeed
“A profound meditation on life and freedom.”
— Entertainment Weekly“MacDonald’s writing captures the inexpressible rhythm of being.”
— USA Today“Macdonald fills her narratives with vivid descriptions of the wildlife that surrounds us.”
— Time“Dazzling…Macdonald reminds us how marvelously unfamiliar much of the nonhuman world remains to us, even as we continue to diminish it.”
— Wall Street Journal“Gorgeously composed, complexly affecting, and stunningly revelatory.”
— Booklist (starred review)“An altogether memorable collection…Exemplary writing about the intersection of the animal and human worlds.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, historian, and naturalist, as well as an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses. She also worked as a research fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. As a professional falconer, she assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia.