The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness

by Cal Flyn

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Islands of Abandonment, comes a new book about our relationship to the natural world.

This book takes us into the wild – deep into dark forests, to the top of mountains and into the heart of deserts. It addresses our deep yearnings to be awed and inspired by landscapes that remain beyond our reach and examines what nature gets up to in the absence of humans.

In 10 chapters, each loosely structured around a visit to some of the world’s wildest and most invigorating landscapes, the book asks provocative questions about the nature of wilderness and how wild places might best be appreciated or preserved.

These locations have been chosen for their physical beauty, their perceived isolation, and the moral or emotional complexity of the human stories that can be found there. In this search for wilderness, we will meet ascetics in search of theophany in the desert; lonely shepherds seeing off wolves under the stars; missionaries preaching from shacks deep in the jungle; wise lamas meditating under lofty mountain peaks.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction

448 pages, Hardcover

First published March 7, 2026

Reviews

[Sean Farrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really loved this at first, and was well on the way to giving it a full five stars. Beautifully written, spiritual but not cloyingly so, and full of incredibly challenging ideas and revelations about the cost of conservation. The first three quarters of the book is some of the most enjoyable I've read in a while.

And then, for me at least, it just trailed off a bit. I understood the need to go to the Antarctic but found it somewhat uninteresting after the earlier chapters. The chapter Gods of the High ground just lacked focus and I can barely remember it. And the conclusion didn't bring it all together in the way it could have. It just sort of drifted away from me.

I'd still recommend it though, the failings may be mine and there's a lot of really good, thought provoking stuff here. Also - what a great idea for a book!

[Timothy Beecroft · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written and profound meditation on what wilderness is (does it even exist?) and what it means for both its inhabitants (and yes, they do or did exist) and for the rest of us.

Those of us who have read Cal Flyn’s previous book “Islands of Abandonment” (and if you haven’t you must) will know that with her as our guide she will take us to extraordinary places (from Mount Sinai to Antarctica via the Amazon and many other points in between) write brilliantly about what she is seeing, learning, experiencing and thinking, get herself into a variety of scrapes and help us think about things in a new light.

Even more philosophically deep, personally revealing and heartfelt that her previous book, “The Savage Landscape” is a major achievement. And a gripping read. Can’t recommend it highly
enough.”