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Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness
by Adam Weymouth
An illuminating account of one wolf's journey across the Alps into Italy, and what the resurgence of wolves says about our connection to nature, immigration, and one another—from an award-winning journalist.
In 2011, a wolf named Slavc left his home territory of Slovenia for a wide-ranging journey across the Alps. Tracked by a GPS collar, he traveled over 1,200 miles, where he would mate with a female wolf on a walkabout of her own—the only two wolves for hundreds of square miles—and start the first pack to call the Italian Alps home in more than a century. A decade later and there are more than a hundred wolves in the area, the result of their remarkable meeting. Now, journalist Adam Weymouth follows Slavc's path on foot, and in doing so, interrogates the fears and realities of those living on land that is being repopulated by wolves; a metaphor for economic, political, and climate upheaval in a region that is seeing a centuries-old way of life being upended.
Weymouth journeys to understand how wolves—vilified throughout history in literature, art, and folklore—are slowly creeping back into our forests, woods, and sometimes even our towns, and what that deep-rooted terror at the back of our minds really means. Slavc serves as the ultimate symbol for the outsider, journeying through places that are now wrestling with an influx of immigration, a resurgence of the far-right wing, and the steady decline of the environment due to the rapid advance of climate change; the question of how we see the other and treat the earth becomes paramount in everyday lives. Examining the political dimensions that this individual animal's trek brings to light, Lone Wolf tells a newly resonant story—one less about fear and more about the courage required to seek out a new life, as well as the challenge of accepting the changing world around us.
Sharply observed, searching, and written in poetic and precise prose, Lone Wolf explores the thorny connection between humans and nature, and indeed between borders themselves, and presses us to consider this much-discussed creature anew.
"Scintillating ... Weymouth is an ace travel writer whose immersive prose brings to vivid life the characters and settings he encounters ... It adds up to a penetrating analysis of wolves' contested place in a human-dominated world." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"With clear, engrossing prose [Weymouth] illuminates the plight of the wolf in the modern era—one that plumbs the depths of belonging. A fascinating, powerfully rendered portrait that extends beyond wolves to human nature." —Kirkus Reviews
"Lone Wolf explains deep time Old World prejudices that still hold an ocean away and across centuries. This book is a mirror that reflects wolf eyes in multiple directions." —Dan Flores, New York Times bestselling author of Coyote America and Wild New World
"Tracing the footsteps of the legendary wolf Slavc, Adam Weymouth guides us alongside melting glaciers and into Austrian farm towns, writing with tremendous curiosity and compassion about the challenges of being an animal—both human and wolf—in a rapidly changing environment." —Erica Berry, award-winning author of Wolfish
This information about Lone Wolf was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Adam Weymouth is an author and journalist who has written for a wide range of publications, including The Atlantic, The Guardian, the BBC, and Granta. Weymouth won The Sunday Times/PFD 2018 Young Writer of the Year Award for his first book, Kings of the Yukon, which was published to great acclaim, shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, named the Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book of the Year, and chosen as a notable title for the 2018 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. He was named one of ten writers shaping the UK's future by the National Centre for Writing, and lives on the southeast coast of England.
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