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The New Wilderness

By: Diane Cook
Narrated by: Stacey Glemboski
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Publisher's Summary

Shortlisted for 2020 Booker Prize

From an acclaimed Guardian First Book Award finalist comes a debut novel.

Bea's five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away. The smog and pollution of the overdeveloped, overpopulated metropolis they call home is ravaging her lungs. Bea knows she cannot stay in the City, but there is only one alternative: the Wilderness State. Mankind has never been allowed to venture into this vast expanse of untamed land. Until now.

Bea and Agnes join 18 other volunteers who agree to take part in a radical experiment. They must slowly learn how to live in the unpredictable, often dangerous Wilderness, leaving no trace on their surroundings in their quest to survive. But as Agnes embraces this new existence, Bea realises that saving her daughter's life might mean losing her in ways she hadn't foreseen.

At once a blazing lament of our contempt for nature and a deeply humane portrayal of motherhood, The New Wilderness is an extraordinary, urgent novel from a celebrated new literary voice.

©2020 Diane Cook (P)2020 W F Howes
Family Life Literary Fiction Dystopian
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Critic Reviews

“Cook's is a fresh and vivid voice; it's unsurprising the likes of Miranda July and Roxane Gay are fans.” (Observer)

“The New Wilderness is a virtuosic debut, brutal and beautiful in equal measure.” (Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel)

What listeners say about The New Wilderness

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Profile Image for M. Owens

Original Idea but ran out of puff

I enjoyed the story on the whole. the main characters were complex and the relationships interesting.
I didn't enjoy the later half of the book which lost momentum.

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2 people found this helpful

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this is so unimaginative, boring, dull, and what

this is very unimaginative, dull and so small in scope. attempts to discuss human nature or nature itself inadequ

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1 person found this helpful

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.